* 


DS  145  .S3  1909 
Schomer ,  Abraham  Shaikewitz, 
1876-1916. 

The  primary  cause  of 
antisemitism 


The  Primary  Cause 


ANTISEMITISM 


AN  ANSWER  TO  THE 
JEWISH  QUESTION 


0 


New  York 

ISRAEL  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

1909 


Copyright,  1909,  by 

ISRAEL  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 


Dedicated  to  the  Cherished  Memory  of 
MY  FATHER 

Naum  Meir  Shaikewitz  Schomer 


PREFACE. 


In  the  following  pages  an  attempt  is 
made  to  explain  the  origin  and  primary 
cause  of  antisemitism,  thereby  answer¬ 
ing  the  Jewish  Question,  which  for  the 
past  twenty  centuries  has  been  the  most 
vexata  quaestio  of  mankind. 

The  theory  presented  here  is  a  new 
one.  But  from  the  positive  data  at  our 
command,  the  author  elicited  the  new 
theory  which,  he  believes,  fully  explains 
the  reason  for  the  continuous  existence 
of  antisemitism. 

The  reader  is  requested  to  excuse 
some  lengthy  illustrations  and  repeti¬ 
tions  of  certain  facts  which  will  be  met 
with  in  the  course  of  the  inquiry.  The 
subject  being  a  difficult  one,  it  was  neces¬ 
sary,  in  order  to  make  it  accessible  to  the 
general  reading  public,  to  present  it  in 
as  popular  and  intelligible  a  manner  as 
the  subject  permits. 


VI 


PREFACE. 


At  this  stage  it  is  also  the  author’s 
wish  to  say  a  few  words  concerning  his 
misgivings  as  to  how  the  world  may 
treat  his  theory  and  himself;  his  object 
being  to  call  the  reader’s  attention  to  a 
peculiar  phenomenon  and  rule  observed 
in  the  history  of  mankind,  to  which  the 
author  hopes  to  be  an  exception. 

At  no  time  in  the  history  of  civiliza¬ 
tion  have  new  theories,  no  matter  how 
true  they  were,  succeeded  at  first  in  ob¬ 
taining  the  stamp  of  approval  of  man¬ 
kind.  They  required  the  aid  of  time  to 
force  an  ingress  into  the  minds  of  men 
and  become  accepted  as  fundamental 
truths. 

The  fates  of  the  authors  were  there¬ 
fore  similar  to  those  of  their  theories 
and  even  worse.  As  the  theories  had 
suffered  from  tyrannous  criticism,  ridi¬ 
cule  and  every  possible  biting  sarcasm, 
so  were  their  authors  subjected  to  similar 

ordeals  to  which  were  yet  added  un- 
% 

founded  accusations  and  calumny.  In- 

■5 


PREFACE.  VII 

stead  of  appreciation,  the  theorist  re¬ 
ceived  scorn  and  hatred,  instead  of 
encouragement  and  approval,  reproach 
and  mis  judgment. 

*  ❖ 

❖ 

The  application  of  mathematical  for¬ 
mulas  in  the  solution  of  the  J ewish 
problem,  which  the  author  has  intro¬ 
duced  in  this  work,  will  probably  strike 
the  reader  as  unconventional.  However, 
the  author  believes  this  method  will 
present  the  subject  in  a  clear  way  and 
bring  it  down  to  a  definite  point. 

The  author  hereby  wishes  to  express 
his  gratitude — 

To  his  sister,  Miss  Rose  Schomer,  for 
her  careful  perusal  of  the  manuscript 
of  this  thesis  and  for  some  important 
criticisms  which  she  offered  on  certain 
points  therein,  thereby  enabling  the 
author  to  correct  them  before  it  went 
to  press; 


VIII 


PREFACE. 


To  Mr.  A.  S.  Freidus,  of  the  New 
York  Public  Library,  for  his  friendly 
aid  in  the  research  of  bibliography  on 
the  Jewish  Question; 

To  Mr.  Sampson  Lederhendler,  for  his 
kind  assistance  in  reading  the  proofs  of 
this  work. 

This  book  is  submitted  to  the  public 
in  general  and  the  student  in  particular 
with  the  hope  that  they  will,  as  the 
author  did,  find  the  solution  of  the  Jew¬ 
ish  problem  here  presented  to  be  a 
correct  one. 

The  Author. 


New  York,  November,  1908. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


PAGE 


Pbeface  .  V 

Introductory  Essay . 1 


Of  Problems  and  Riddles 
Of  Problem  Specialists  and  Their  Rela¬ 
tion  to  Mankind 

Of  the  Methods  Employed  in  Solving 
Everyday  Problems 

Of  the  Methods  Employed  in  Solving 
World  Problems. 

Of  Cause  and  Effect 

I 

The  jEwisn  Question  and  Former  Attempts 
at  Its  Solution . 13 

The  Jewish  Question  Still  a  Mystery 
Contradictions  of  Attempted  Explana¬ 
tions 

Dr.  Leo  Pinsker’s  “Auto-Emancipation” 

Dr.  Theodor  Herzl’s  “A  Jewish  State” 
Bernard  Lazare’s  “Antisemitism,  Its 
History  and  Causes” 

Synopsis  of  Lazare’s  Views 
Anatole  Leroy-Beaulieu’s  “Israel  Among 
the  Nations” 

II 

Of  the  Prejudice  Against  the  Jew  ....  46 

Prejudice  Against  the  Jew  Always  in 
Evidence 

Definition  of  Antisemitism 
Charles  Waldstein’s  “The  Jewish  Ques¬ 
tion  and  the  Mission  of  the  Jews” 

,  G.  F.  Abbott’s  “Israel  in  Europe” 

Peculiar  Perplexity  of  Jewish  Question 
What  Is  Needed  to  Solve  the  Puzzle. 


IX 


X 


CONTENTS. 


III 

PAGE 

Beginnings  of  Judeophobia . 52 

The  Periods  of  Judeophobia 
First  Appearance  of  Jew-hatred 
Egyptians 
Haman 

Second  Epoch  Considered 

IV 

Of  the  Factors  in  the  Problem . 60 

Two  Factors — Gentile  and  Jew 
“The  Public  Estimate  of  the  Jew” 

Third  Factor — Prejudice 

y 

Of  the  Relations  and  Nature  of  the  Factors  62 
The  Relation  of  the  Factors 
Formula 

Gentile  and  Jew,  What  They  Are 
Opinion  of  Ernest  Renan 
Prejudice  Defined 
Prof.  Joseph  Baldwin’s  Definitions 
Why  the  Forms  of  Antisemitism  Are 
Different 

The  Views  of  Pinsker  and  Herzl  Briefly 
Considered 

Prejudice  No  More  Than  a  Mental  Emo¬ 
tion 

Prejudice  Not  Hereditary 
Amended  Formula 
Observation  of  the  Jew 

VI 

Man  and  Jew . 73 

An  Experiment 

The  Man- Jew  and  Name- Jew 

Further  Amendment  of  Formula 


CONTENTS. 


XI 


VII 

The  Name  Jew  .... 

Nothing  Amiss  with  Individual  Jew 
Prejudice  Directed  Against  Name  Jew 

VIII 

Jews,  Judaism,  Jewish  Religion  and  Why 
They  Survived . 80 

The  Organization  of  the  Jewish  People 
at  Mount  Sinai 
The  By-Laws  of  Judaism 
The  Rabbis’  Discipline 
Difference  Between  Judaism  and  Jew¬ 
ish  Religion 

An  International  Ethical  and  Spiritual 
People 

IX 

Some  of  the  Supposed  Causes . 87 

Judaism  and  the  Jewish  Religion 
Exclusiveness  of  the  Jew 
Crucifixion  of  Jesus 
Lack  of  Land 
Economic  Conditions 

X 

Of  Societies  and  Multitudes . 94 

Difference  Between  a  Multitude  and  a 
Society 

Assemblage  and  Representation 
The  Abnormality  of  the  Jews  as  a  Col¬ 
lective  Body 

XI 

Collective  Bodies  and  the  Law  of  the  Mind  99 

Some  Philosophers  on  the  Subject 
Prof.  Borden  P.  Bowne’s  “Theory  of 
Thought  and  Knowledge” 


PAGE 

.  78 


XII 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

The  Affirmation  of  Unity  and  Plurality 
Illustrations 

The  Mind,  When  Psychological  and 
Logical 

Application  of  Mental  Law  to  Corpora¬ 
tions 

The  Primary  Cause  of  Antisemitism  Dis¬ 
covered 


XII 


Further  Proof . 115 

Mental  Attitude  Toward  Abnormal 
Bodies 

George  H.  Warner’s  “The  Jewish 
Spectre” 

Bernard  G.  Richards’  “Discourses  of 
Keidansky” 

Mental  Confusion  as  to  What  Consti¬ 
tutes  a  Jew 

Egyptians’  Prejudice  Against  the  Israel¬ 
ites  Considered. 

Civilization  Does  Not  Wipe  Out  Anti¬ 
semitism 

The  Jews  Prejudiced  Against  Them¬ 
selves 

Mr.  Arnold  White’s  “The  Modern  Jew” 

The  Jews’  Secret  Bond 

Jews  Complain  of  Lack  of  Solidarity 

Vague  Attempts  at  Union 

Distinction  Between  “Israel”  and  “Jew” 

Some  Fundamental  Principles 

XIII 

Of  Knowledge  and  Reason  vs.  Superstition 
and  Prejudice  and  of  Theory  and  Fact  .  .  142 

When  Prejudice  and  Superstition  Take 
Flight 

The  Triumph  of  Knowledge  and  Reason 


CONTENTS. 


XIII 


PAGE 

Why  Knowledge  Is  Power 
The  Crude  Condition  of  the  Mind 
Superstition  and  Prejudice  Not  a  Mental 
Disease 

The  Mind  Is  Progressive 

Duration  of  Prejudice  and  Superstition 

Habit 

Reason  Still  Immature 
The  Practical  Solution  of  the  Jewish 
Question 

The  Abstract  and  the  Concrete 
Marconi’s  Wireless  Telegraph 

XIV 


Summing  Up . 149 

The  Primary  Cause  of  Antisemitism 
The  Mind  Must  Be  Psychological  and 
Logical 

The  Universality  of  the  Law  of  the  Mind 
XV 

Final  Answer . 153 

To  Normalize  the  State  of  the  Jews 
An  International  Association  Must  Have 
International  Representatives 
A  Permanent  International  Jewish  Con¬ 
gress  with  Executive  Officers 

Bibliography  . 


159 


s 


INTRODUCTORY  ESSAY. 


In  view  of  the  fact  that  after  all  that 
has  been  written  concerning  the  Jewish 
Question,  it  still  continues  to  be  re¬ 
garded  as  a  riddle  and  mystery,  it  is  of 
the  utmost  importance  for  us,  before  we 
start  out  on  the  voyage  of  discovery  of 
the  origin  and  primary  cause  of  anti¬ 
semitism,  to  prepare  ourselves  by  first 
considering  the  general  nature  of  prob¬ 
lems  and  riddles;  problem  solvers  and 
their  relation  to  mankind;  the  methods 
employed  for  solving  problems,  and  the 
nature  of  cause  and  effect  in  the  general 
sense  of  these  terms. 

OF  PROBLEMS  AND  RIDDLES. 

Every  matter  and  every  phenomenon 
which  we  do  not  understand  we  re¬ 
gard  as  a  problem,  and  by  the  very  na¬ 
ture  of  our  being  we  seek  to  understand 
and  explain  it.  As  soon  as  we  have  men¬ 
tally  grasped  the  nature  of  the  thing  or 


2 


INTRODUCTORY  ESSAY. 


of  the  phenomenon,  and  are  able  to  ex¬ 
plain  the  effect  by  the  cause,  we  an¬ 
nounce  the  problem  solved.  Thence¬ 
forth  we  regard  that  particular  thing  or 
phenomenon  as  something  ordinary  and 
usual;  the  problem  ceases  to  be. 

It  is  quite  otherwise  when  after  our 
research  we  fail  to  find  the  answer,  and 
we  realize  that  our  efforts  at  a  solution 
are  futile;  we  then  no  longer  consider 
the  phenomenon  as  merely  a  problem; 
we  begin  to  look  upon  it  as  a  mystery — 
a  riddle.  The  more  time  passes  away, 
and  the  more  we  have  exerted  ourselves 
without  success,  the  more  involved  the 
riddle  seems  to  be,  till  we  begin  to  view 
it  with  superstition;  not  because  we  are 
of  a  superstitious  disposition,  but  for 
the  simple  reason  that  the  nature  of  our 
mind  is  such  that  it  regards  with  awe 
things  it  cannot  understand,  and  uncon¬ 
sciously,  through  a  certain  psychological 
process  unperceived  by  ourselves,  the 
mind  responds  to  a  kind  of  mysterious 


INTRODUCTORY  ESSAY. 


3 


speculation,  which  by  its  nature  is  su¬ 
perstition. 

There  is  also  another  similar  form  of 
expression  against  things  we  do  not 
understand.  This  form  is  prejudice. 

Prejudice  and  superstition  are  very 
closely  related  and  often  follow  each 
other. 

Let  any  man  look  critically  into  the 
secret  workings  of  his  own  mind  and  he 
will  find  that,  notwithstanding  his  edu¬ 
cation  and  knowledge,  if  he  be  con¬ 
fronted  for  a  considerable  time  with  an 
unexplainable  situation,  he  will  discover 
within  himself  the  germs  of  superstition 
and  prejudice. 

The  fact  that  we  are  at  times  unable 
to  solve  a  problem  does  certainly 
not  mean  that  we  actually  deal  with  a 
mystery.  It  shows  only  that  either  we 
are  not  sufficiently  equipped  with  the  re¬ 
quisite  knowledge  for  the  task,  or  we  a .ra 
on  the  wrong  path  of  our  inquiry,  and 
are  looking  for  the  solution  in  the  wrong 


4 


INTRODUCTORY  ESSAY. 


direction.  Not  infrequently  do  we  com¬ 
plicate  problems  and  render  their  solu¬ 
tion  impossible  simply  by  starting  out 
from  wrong  premises,  and  afterward  we 
discover  that  the  problem  which  was 
given  up  as  a  hopeless  riddle  is  in  fact 
based  upon  some  simple  proposition 
which  was  either  not  noticed  or  misun¬ 
derstood.  Under  such  circumstances  we 
strikingly  resemble  that  mechanic  to 
whom  a  box  was  handed  with  a  request 
that  he  find  its  secret  opening.  He 
turned  and  examined  the  box  on  every 
side  for  hours,  but  without  success.  In 
despair  he  declared  that  the  secret  of 
the  opening  was  too  difficult  for  him. 
To  his  astonishment  he  was  shown  that 
the  box  held  no  secret  at  all,  but  opened 
in  a  simple  manner  like  all  ordinary 
boxes. 

OF  PROBLEM  SPECIALISTS  AND  THEIR  RELA¬ 
TION  TO  MANKIND. 

Non  omnia  possumus  omnes . — It  is 


INTRODUCTORY  ESSAY. 


5 


impossible  that  all  men  should  do  all 
things  and  understand  all  things.  Man¬ 
kind  instinctively  recognizes  this  fact, 
and  is  therefore  satisfied  when  there  are 
certain  classes  of  men  designated  as  spe¬ 
cialists,  who  master  important  problems. 

Mankind  does  not  regard  the  most 
complicated  thing  or  phenomenon  as  a 
mystery  if  it  is  aware  that  it  is  no 
mystery  to  the  specialist. 

To  the  vast  majority  of  men,  wireless 
telegraphy,  for  instance,  is  certainly  a 
riddle ;  the  same  is  true  of  the  telephone, 
the  phonograph  and  hundreds  of  other 
complicated  inventions.  Yet  everybody 
looks  at  these  things  and  their  phenom¬ 
ena  as  ordinary,  because  every  one  has 
the  consciousness  that  they  are  the 
product  of  inventors  who  have  created 
them  and  consequently  understand  them. 

In  the  same  manner  we  behold  man¬ 
kind,  for  example,  relying  on  the  class  of 
specialists  known  as  physicians.  While 
most  maladies  and  diseases  are  mys- 


6 


INTRODUCTORY  ESSAY. 


teries  and  riddles  to  the  layman,  yet  man¬ 
kind  does  not  fear  the  diseases  known  to 
be  curable,  but  is  in  mortal  dread  of 
maladies  known  to  be  incurable. 

This  is  because  the  medical  profession 
admits  that  it  is  unable  to  discover  the 
causes  of  those  diseases. 

Let  us  take  as  an  illustration  the  dis¬ 
ease  known  as  cancer.  Because  it  is  the 
crux  medicorum  it  is  also  the  puzzle  of 
mankind,  and  is  feared  by  everybody. 
But  no  sooner  will  the  physician  an¬ 
nounce  that  he  has  discovered  the  cause 
of  cancer,  and  demonstrate  that  he  cures 
it,  then  all  fear  will  vanish  and  the  lay¬ 
men,  who  knew  nothing  about  it,  either 
before  or  after  the  discovery  of  its  cause 
and  cure,  will  say  in  all  confidence  that 
cancer  is  not  a  serious  disease,  because 
it  is  curable . 

We  are  also  aware  that  there  are,  for 
instance,  certain  diseases  which  are  cur¬ 
able,  although  their  causes  are  not 
known ;  as  rheumatism,  kidney  diseases, 


INTRODUCTORY  ESSAY. 


7 


etc.  In  such  instances  we  observe  the 
difference  in  the  physician’s  manner  of 
action.  For  diseases  of  which  the  causes 
are  known  he  prescribes  or  operates 
with  positiveness  and  certainty;  but  in 
cases  the  causes  of  which  are  unknown 
he  will  be  in  doubt  as  to  the  cure,  and 
should  the  least  complication  arise  in  the 
condition  of  the  patient,  the  physician 
will  be  thrown  into  utter  confusion  and 
will  no  longer  be  certain  as  to  the 
remedy. 

This  is  true  not  only  with  the  physi¬ 
cian,  but  with  men  of  every  class  when 
they  are  called  upon  to  treat  problems 
the  real  causes  of  which  are  unknown  to 
them. 

OF  THE  METHODS  EMPLOYED  IN  SOLVING 
EVERY-DAY  PROBLEMS. 

In  considering  the  manner  in  which 
every-day  problems  are  being  solved,  we 
find  that  there  are  two  methods  used. 
When  such  a  problem  is  put  to  men  we 


8 


INTRODUCTORY  ESSAY. 


observe  that  some  will  try  to  guess  the 
answer,  while  others  will  endeavor  to 
discover  and  understand  the  answer. 
The  answers  which  the  two  will  give  will 
both  be  opinions.  The  opinion  of  the 
gnesser  is  not  based  on  reason  and  facts. 
It  is  given  without  sure  grounds  for  the 
inference  and  is  therefore  a  judgment 
based  on  “perhaps”  and  “maybe.”  In 
ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred  the 
guesser  will  fail  to  strike  upon  the  cor¬ 
rect  answer,  but  if  by  chance  he  will 
stumble  upon  the  right  way,  we  will  even 
then  have  no  confidence  in  his  opinion, 
because  there  will  be  nothing  in  it  on 
which  the  mind  can  settle  in  the  convic¬ 
tion  that  it  has  attained  the  truth.  The 
guesser  himself  will  be  far  from  certain 
as  to  the  correctness  of  his  judgment  and 
will  not  trust  himself  for  the  same  rea¬ 
son.  The  least  forcible  argument  which 
will  be  presented  against  his  opinion 
will  swerve  him  from  his  position  and 
make  him  change  his  mind,  and  this  he 


INTRODUCTORY  ESSAY. 


9 


will  do  as  many  times  as  there  will  be 
arguments. 

Not  so  with  the  one  who  discovers  and 
understands  the  answer.  This  one  will 
state  an  opinion  which  is  supported  by 
facts  and  arguments.  Such  an  opinion 
is  a  certainty,  a  truth  to  which  eventually 
every  mind  will  yield. 

These  two  classes  of  men  are  met  with 
daily  in  every  walk  of  life— socially,  in 
business  and  among  the  professionals. 
Among  all  these  there  are  ever  present 
the  guesser  and  the  one  who  knows. 

OF  THE  METHODS  EMPLOYED  IN  SOLVING 
WORLD  PROBLEMS. 

In  considering  the  manner  in  which 
world  problems  are  solved  we  also  find 
that  there  are  two  methods  used.  These 
can  be  designated  as  the  literary  method 
and  the9  scientific  method. 

The  difference  between  the  literary 
and  the  scientific  method  is  striking.  The 


10 


INTRODUCTORY  ESSAY. 


views  of  the  litterateur  are  undoubtedly 
highly  interesting  and  instructive,  as  he 
always  opens  glimpses  of  truth  and 
stimulates  thought.  In  the  literary 
method  we  frequently  find  that  the  lit¬ 
terateur  resorts  to  the  form  of  the  es¬ 
say,  the  novel,  the  drama,  and  so  forth, 
wherein  he  treats  on  problems.  But  he 
never  solves  them.  At  best  his  sugges¬ 
tions  and  plans  will  help  to  slightly  im¬ 
prove  conditions  for  a  short  time. 

The  reason  for  the  litterateur’s  fail¬ 
ure  to  solve  problems  is  that  he 
treats  on  the  effects  and  not  on  the 
causes  of  phenomena.  As  no  effect 
ceases  unless  the  cause  is  removed,  the 
litterateur’s  suggested  remedies  are  of 
no  great  importance,  for  the  cause  he 
never  finds.  His  remedies,  therefore, 
are  not  fundamental. 

The  scientific  method,  on  the  other 
hand,  solves  problems  because  it  is 
directed  for  the  discovery  of  the  pri¬ 
mary  causes,  the  fundamental  truths, 


INTRODUCTORY  ESSAY. 


11 


and  aims  to  establish  first  principles 
upon  which  all  effects  rest. 

We  thus  see  that  in  undertaking  to 
solve  a  problem  there  is  but  one  method 
which  may  enable  the  solver  to  succeed, 
and  that  is  the  scientific  method. 

OF  CAUSE  AND  EFFECT. 

Science  has  established  the  rule  which 
stands  to-day  as  an  axiom,  that  every 
effect  must  be  preceded  by  an  adequate 
cause.  In  other  words,  it  is  impossible 
that  there  should  be  any  kind  of  phe¬ 
nomenon  without  there  being,  underlying 
it,  some  real  cause.  It  is  for  this  reason 
that  in  physical  and  social  sciences 
there  prevails  the  maxim,  that  the  cause 
ceasing,  the  effect  ceases,  ipso  facto.  To 
attempt  the  extermination  of  effects 
leads  to  nothing,  unless  this  is  done  by 
the  annihilation  of  the  cause  which  pro¬ 
duces  them. 

It  is  most  difficult  to  trace  effects  up  to 
the  primary  causes.  The  reason  for  it 


12 


INTRODUCTORY  ESSAY. 


is  clear;  in  a  long  train  of  events  every 
effect  in  its  turn  becomes  a  cause  which 
produces  another  effect,  and  the  new 
effect  as  well  becomes  a  cause  for  still 
another  effect,  and  so  on  ad  infinitum. 
In  this  we  see  the  reason  why  an  old 
physical  or  social  problem  is  so  difficult 
of  solution.  The  numerous  effects  which 
confront  the  solver  confuse  his  mind, 
and  he  is  lost  in  a  labyrinth  of  causes 
and  effects  which  lead  him  from  one 
thought  to  another  in  quick  succession, 
and  yet  he  finds  himself  to  be  no  further 
than  when  he  started.  He  tries  with  all 
might  to  extricate  himself  and  the  prob¬ 
lem  from  the  confusion  of  the  numerous 
passages  which  lead  to  nothing,  and  only 
by  untiring,  systematic  and  persistent 
effort  can  he  come  out  successfully  carry¬ 
ing  the  sought-for  solution  of  the  prob¬ 
lem  with  him. 


The  Primary  Cause  of  Antisemitism 

I. 

The  Jewish  Question  and  Former 
Attempts  at  Its  Solution. 

The  Jewish  Question  ceased  to  be  a 
problem  long  ago.  It  became  a  mystery 
— a  riddle. 

Through  the  many  centuries  of  its  ex¬ 
istence  it  made  for  itself  and  for  its 
people  the  name  of  the  “wandering 
mystery/ ’  and  is  as  yet  regarded  as  the 
crux  criticorum.  It  is  nearly  two  thou¬ 
sand  years  since  this  riddle  of  the 
Sphinx  has  been  baffling  the  minds  of 
men  and  keeping  mankind  guessing. 

After  all  that  has  been  said  and  writ¬ 
ten  regarding  this  problem,  and  after  all 
the  attempts  which  have  been  made  by 
Jew  and  Gentile  at  a  solution,  the  mys- 

13 


14 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


tery  continues  to  this  very  day,  and  the 
more  time  elapses  the  more  complicated 
and  involved  the  riddle  becomes. 

When  one  only  reflects  how  many  able 
men  have  worked  on  its  solution  without 
success,  it  seems  useless  even  to  try  at 
making  another  effort  in  that  direc¬ 
tion. 

It  is  different,  however,  when  one 
plunges  into  the  intricacies  of  this  prob¬ 
lem  of  problems,  and  begins  a  systematic 
study  of  the  volumes  which  have  been 
written  concerning  it.  After  reading 
the  most  important  works  on  the  sub¬ 
ject,  one  must  admit  that  most  of  the 
authors  have  very  ably  treated  the  prob¬ 
lem  as  litterateurs,  but  not  as  scientists. 
They  have  given  us  interesting  glimpses 
of  many  truths  concerning  the  problem, 
they  have  in  a  masterly  manner  dis¬ 
cussed  the  numerous  effects,  but  none  of 
them  traced  the  primary  cause  of  all, 
and  for  this  reason  the  Jewish  Question 
remained  unsolved. 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


15 


A  curious  feature  observable  in  al¬ 
most  every  book  written  on  tlie  Jewish 
Question  is  the  vagueness  and  self-con¬ 
tradiction  evinced  in  the  treatment  of 
the  subject. 

Not  only  is  the  antisemite  inconsistent 
in  his  accusations  of  the  Jew,  but  the 
friend  of  the  Jew  also  displays  consid¬ 
erable  confusion  and  inconsistency  of 
thought  in  enumerating  the  virtues  of 
the  Jew  and  the  causes  of  antisemitism. 

According  to  the  antisemite  the  Jew 
is  a  pauper  and  a  capitalist,  a  contempt¬ 
ible  coward  and  the  boldest  fighter,  the 
most  ignorant  man  and  the  too-much 
bright  student,  a  miser  and  a  spend¬ 
thrift,  a  narrow-minded  reactionary  and 
a  revolutionary  radical,  etc.,  etc. 

These  contradictory  extremes  are 
uttered  in  one  breath  with  the  positive 
conviction  that  they  are  true. 

The  friend  of  the  Jew,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  inconsistent,  as  we  have  said, 
in  enumerating  the  Jew’s  virtues,  and 


16 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


those  who  sought  to  solve  the  Jewish 
problem  were  peculiarly  confused  and 
inconsistent  as  to  the  causes  of  anti¬ 
semitism.  They  all  give  numerous 
causes  for  Judeophobia,  declaring  that 
most  of  them  and  none  of  them  are  the 
real  causes,  contradicting  their  own  as¬ 
sertions  and  gainsaying  the  statements 
of  each  other,  and  thus  complicate  the 
question  more  and  more. 

The  reason  for  the  confusion  and  in¬ 
consistency  of  thought  regarding  the 
Jews  will  he  explained  in  the  course  of 
the  inquiry. 

A  brief  review  of  the  thoughts  of  sev¬ 
eral  of  the  best  men  who  treated  the  sub¬ 
ject  will  first  introduce  the  problem  itself 
to  the  reader  and  show  its  most  impor¬ 
tant  points;  secondly,  it  will  show  the 
manner  of  treatment  the  problem  re¬ 
ceived  at  their  hands,  and  lastly,  it  will 
enable  the  reader  to  judge  rightly  of  the 
new  theory  presented  in  the  following 
chapters. 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


17 


We  shall  therefore  begin  with  the 
brochure  of  the  late  Dr.  Leo  Pinsker,  a 
Russian  Jew,  which  appeared  in  the 
year  1881,  under  the  title,  “Auto-Eman¬ 
cipation.” 

This  brochure  may  be  considered  as 
the  ablest  effort  at  an  analysis  of  the 
problem.  Its  strength  of  style,  glimpses 
of  truth  and  force  of  argument  impress 
the  mind  as  perhaps  no  other  work  on 
the  same  subject,  and  yet  it  cannot  be 
regarded  as  a  scientific  work,  but  only 
as  a  splendid  literary  effort. 

Among  other  things  that  brochure 
contains  the  following: 

“The  eternal  problem  presented  by 
the  Jewish  Question  stirs  men  to-day, 
as  it  did  ages  ago.  It  remains  un¬ 
solved,  like  the  squaring  of  the  circle, 
unlike  which,  however,  it  is  still  a 
burning  question.  This  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  it  is  not  merely  a  problem 
of  theoretic  interest,  but  one  of  prac- 


18 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


tical,  which  renews  its  youth  from  day 
to  day,  as  it  were,  and  presses  more 
and  more  imperiously  for  a  solution. 

.  .  After  the  Jewish  people 

had  given  up  their  existence  as  an 
actual  state,  as  a  political  entity,  they 
could  nevertheless  not  succumb  to 
total  destruction — they  did  not  cease 
to  exist  spiritually  as  a  nation.  The 
world  saw  in  this  people  the  uncanny 
form  of  one  of  the  dead  walking 
among  the  living.  This  ghostly  ap¬ 
parition  of  a  people  without  unity  or 
organization,  without  land  or  other 
bond  of  union,  no  longer  alive,  and 
yet  moving  about  among  the  living — 
this  strange  form,  hardly  paralleled 
in  history,  unlike  anything  that  pre¬ 
ceded  or  followed  it,  could  not  fail  to 
make  a  strange,  peculiar  impression 
upon  the  imagination  of  the  peoples. 
And  if  the  fear  of  the  ghosts  is  some¬ 
thing  innate  and  has  a  certain  justifi¬ 
cation  in  the  psychic  life  of  humanity, 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


19 


wliat  wonder  that  it  asserted  itself 
powerfully  at  the  sight  of  this  dead 
and  yet  living  nation? 

“Fear  of  the  Jewish  ghost  has  been 
handed  down  and  strengthened  for 
generations  and  centuries.  It  led  to  a 
prejudice  which,  in  its  connection  with 
other  circumstances  (to  be  discussed 
later),  opened  the  way  of  Judeo- 
phobia. 

“Along  with  a  number  of  other  un¬ 
conscious  and  superstitious  ideas,  in¬ 
stincts  and  idiosyncrasies,  Judeopho- 
bia  also  has  been  fully  naturalized 
among  all  peoples  of  the  earth  with 
whom  the  J  ews  had  intercourse. 
Judeophobia  is  a  form  of  demon- 
opathy. 

“Judeophobia  is  a  psychic  disor¬ 
der.  As  a  psychic  disorder  it  is 
hereditary  and  as  a  disease  transmit¬ 
ted  for  two  thousand  years  it  is  in¬ 
curable. 

“.  .  .  Friend  and  foe  alike  have 


20 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


tried  to  explain  or  to  justify  this 
hatred  of  the  Jews  by  bringing  all 
sorts  of  charges  against  them.  They 
are  said  to  have  crucified  Jesus,  to 
have  drunk  Christian  blood,  to  have 
poisoned  wells,  to  have  taken  usury, 
to  have  exploited  the  peasants,  and 
so  forth.  These  and  a  thousand  other 
charges  against  an  entire  people  were 
proved  groundless. 

.  .  The  extent  and  the  man¬ 
ner  in  which  this  antipathy  is  mani¬ 
fested  depends,  of  course,  upon  the 
cultural  status  of  each  people.  The 
antipathy  as  such,  however,  exists 
everywhere  and  at  all  times,  no  mat¬ 
ter  whether  it  appears  in  the  form  of 
deeds  of  violence  or  envious  jealousy, 
or  under  the  mask  of  tolerance  and 
protection.  To  be  plundered  as  a  Jew 
or  to  be  protected  as  a  Jew  is  equally 
humiliating,  equally  painful  to  the 
self-respect  of  the  Jews. 

.  .  In  the  psychology  of  the 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION.  21 

peoples  then,  we  find  the  basis  of  the 
prejudice  against  the  Jewish  nation; 
but  other  factors  besides,  not  less  im¬ 
portant,  which  render  impossible  the 
fusion  or  equalization  of  the  Jews 
with  the  other  peoples,  must  also  be 
considered. 

.  .If  the  basis  of  our  reason¬ 
ing  is  sound,  if  the  prejudice  of  the 
human  race  against  us  rests  upon 
anthropological  and  social  principles, 
innate  and  ineradicable,  we  must  look 
no  more  to  the  slow  progress  of  hu¬ 
manity,  and  we  must  learn  to  recog¬ 
nize  that  as  long  as  we  lack  a  home  of 
our  own,  such  as  the  other  nations 
have,  we  must  resign  forever  the, 
noble  hope  of  becoming  the  equals  of 
our  fellow  men.” 

In  conclusion  Dr.  Pensker  says : 

.  .  We  may  sum  up  the  con¬ 

tents  of  this  pamphlet  in  the  follow¬ 
ing  sentences : 

.  .  The  Jews  are  not  a  living 


22 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


nation;  they  are  everywhere  aliens, 
therefore  they  are  despised. 

“  ...  The  civil  and  political 

emancipation  of  the  Jews  is  not  suffi¬ 
cient  to  raise  them  in  the  estimation 
of  the  peoples. 

.  .  The  proper,  the  only  rem¬ 

edy,  would  be  the  creation  of  a  Jewish 
nationality,  of  a  people  living  upon 
their  own  soil,  the  auto-emancipation 
of  the  Jew,  their  emancipation  as  a 
nation  among  nations  by  the  acquisi¬ 
tion  of  a  home  of  their  own. 

“.  .  .  A  way  must  be  opened  for 

the  national  regeneration  of  the  Jews 
by  a  conference  of  Jewish  notables.” 

Pinsker’s  pamphlet  did  not  fail  to 
create  a  stir  among  thinking  Jews.  A 
conference  of  delegates  from  almost  all 
the  countries  of  Europe  met  to  discuss 
the  fundamental  idea  set  forth  by  him, 
but  failed  to  formulate  an  effective  plan 
for  the  solution  of  the  problem.  The 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


23 


only  practical  outcome  was  the  estab¬ 
lishment  of  a  society  for  the  aid  of  Jew¬ 
ish  immigrants  in  Palestine  and  Syria. 

Fourteen  years  after  the  publication 
of  Pinsker’s  brochure,  the  late  Dr.  Theo¬ 
dor  Herzl  came  forth  with  his  famous 
booklet,  “A  Jewish  State,’ ’  which  has 
since,  with  the  untiring  efforts  of  its 
lamented  author,  created  the  great  party 
in  Israel  known  as  the  Zionists. 

This  historical  brochure  presents 
nearly  the  same  arguments  as  that  of 
Dr.  Pinsker;  it  pronounces  the  same  de¬ 
cision  that  the  cure  for  antisemitism  is 
that  the  Jews  should  settle  in  a  territory 
of  their  own,  and  it  formulates  the  plan 
how  this  can  be  accomplished.  Among 
other  things  it  reads : 

.  .  The  Jewish  Question  still 

exists.  It  would  be  useless  to  deny  it. 
It  is  a  remnant  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
which  civilized  nations  do  not  even 
yet  seem  able  to  shake  off,  try  as  they 


24 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


will.  They  certainly  showed  a  gener¬ 
ous  desire  to  do  so  when  they  emanci¬ 
pated  us.  The  Jewish  Question  exists 
wherever  J ews  live  in  perceptible 
!  numbers.  Where  it  does  not  exist,  it 
^  is  carried  by  Jews  in  the  course  of 
their  migrations.  We  naturally  move 
to  those  places  where  we  are  not  per¬ 
secuted,  and  there  our  presence  pro¬ 
duces  persecution.  This  is  the  case 
in  every  country,  and  will  remain  so, 
even  in  those  most  highly  civilized, 
France  itself  being  no  exception — till 
the  Jewish  Question  finds  a  solution 
on  a  political  basis.  The  unfortunate 
Jews  are  now  carrying  antisemitism 
into  England;  and  they  have  already 
introduced  it  in  America. 

.  .  I  believe  that  I  under¬ 

stand  antisemitism,  which  is  really  a 
highly  complex  movement.  I  consider 
it  from  a  Jewish  standpoint,  yet  with¬ 
out  fear  or  hatred.  I  believe  that  I 
can  see  what  elements  there  are  in  it 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


25 


of  vulgar  sport,  of  common  trade 
jealousy,  of  inherited  prejudice,  of  re¬ 
ligious  intolerance,  and  also  of  pre¬ 
tended  self-defense.  I  think  the  Jew¬ 
ish  Question  is  no  more  a  social  than 
a  religious  one,  notwithstanding  that 
it  sometimes  takes  these  and  other 
forms.  It  is  a  national  question, 
♦which  can  only  be  solved  by  making  it 
a  political  world-question  to  be  dis¬ 
cussed  and  controlled  by  the  civilized 
nations  of  the  world  in  council. 

“.  .  .  In  vain  are  we  loyal  pa¬ 

triots,  our  loyalty  in  some  places  run¬ 
ning  to  extremes ;  in  vain  do  we  make 
the  same  sacrifices  of  life  and  prop¬ 
erty  as  our  fellow  citizens ;  in  vain  do 
we  strive  to  increase  the  fame  of  our 
native  land  in  science  and  art,  or  her 
wealth  by  trade  and  commerce.  In 
countries  where  we  have  lived  for  cen¬ 
turies  we  are  still  cried  down  as 
strangers,  and  often  by  those  whose 
ancestors  were  not  yet  domiciled  in 


26 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


the  land  when  Jews  had  already  made 
experience  of  suffering. 

.  .  For  old  prejudice  against 

us  still  lies  deep  in  the  hearts  of  the 
people.  He  who  would  have  proofs 
of  it  need  only  listen  to  the  people 
where  they  speak  with  frankness  and 
simplicity;  proverb  and  fairy  tale  are 
both  antisemitic.  A  nation  is  a  great 
child,  which  can  certainly  be  educated ; 
but  its  education  would,  even  in  most 
favorable  circumstances,  occupy  such 
a  vast  amount  of  time  that  we  could, 
as  already  mentioned,  remove  our 
own  difficulties  by  other  means  long 
before  the  process  was  accomplished. 

.  .  No  one  can  deny  the  grav¬ 

ity  of  the  Jews’  situation.  Wherever 
they  live  in  perceptible  numbers  they 
are  more  or  less  persecuted.  Their 
equality  before  the  law,  granted  by 
statute,  has  become  practically  a  dead 
letter. 

u 


.  .  Attacks  in  Parliaments, 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


27 


in  assemblies,  in  the  press,  in  the  pul¬ 
pit,  in  the  streets,  on  journeys,  for 
example,  their  exclusion  from  certain 
hotels — even  in  places  of  recreation, 
become  daily  more  numerous,  the 
forms  of  persecution  varying  accord¬ 
ing  to  the  countries  in  which  they  oc¬ 
cur.  In  Russia,  impositions  are  levied 
on  Jewish  villages;  in  Roumania,  a 
few  human  beings  are  put  to  death; 
in  Germany,  they  get  a  good  beating 
when  the  occasion  serves;  in  Austria, 
antisemites  exercise  terrorism  over 
all  public  life ;  in  Paris,  they  are  shut 
out  of  the  so-called  best  social  circles 
and  excluded  from  clubs.  Shades  of 
anti- Jewish  feeling  are  innumerable. 
But  this  is  not  to  be  an  attempt  to 
make  out  a  doleful  category  of  Jewish 
hardships;  it  is  futile  to  linger  over 
details,  however  painful  they  may  be. 

.  .  Every  nation  in  whose 

midst  Jews  live  is,  either  covertly  or 
openly,  antisemitic.” 


28 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


Dr.  Herzl  then  discusses  the  previous 
attempts  at  a  solution  by  colonization, 
and  the  diversion  of  poor  Jews  to  fresh 
districts,  and  he  adds : 

“.  .  .  We  cannot  get  the  better 

of  antisemitism  by  any  of  these  meth¬ 
ods.  It  cannot  die  out  so  long  as  the 
causes  are  not  removed.  Are  they 
removable  ? 

.  .  Antisemitism  increases 

day  by  day,  and  hour  by  hour,  among 
the  nations;  indeed  it  is  bound  to  in¬ 
crease,  because  the  causes  of  its 
growth  continue  to  exist,  and  cannot 
be  removed.  Its  remote  cause  is  our 
loss  of  the  power  of  assimilation  dur¬ 
ing  the  Middle  Ages;  its  immediate 
cause  is  our  excessive  production  of 
mediocre  intellects,  who  cannot  find 
an  outlet  downwards  or  upwards ; 
that  is  to  say,  no  wholesome  outlet  in 
either  direction.  When  we  sink,  we 
become  a  revolutionary  proletariat, 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


29 


the  subordinate  officers  of  the  revolu¬ 
tionary  party;  when  we  rise,  there 
rises  also  our  terrible  power  of  the 
purse. ’  ’ 

The  remedy  he  suggested  is: 

.  .  Let  the  sovereignty  he 
granted  us  over  a  portion  of  the  globe 
large  enough  to  satisfy  the  reasonable 
requirements  of  a  nation;  the  rest  we 
shall  manage  for  ourselves.’ ’ 

Pinsker  and  Herzl  had  the  same  iden¬ 
tical  views  on  the  subject,  and  we  also 
do  not  fail  to  observe  that  both  enter¬ 
tained  the  idea  that  the  modern  peoples’ 
prejudice  against  the  Jews  is  an  inher¬ 
ited  prejudice  which  originated  from 
fear  of  the  Jews  and  superstition  con¬ 
cerning  the  Jews.  What  caused  that 
fear  and  superstition  and  why  progres¬ 
sive  civilization  has  failed  to  cure  it, 
they  have  left  unanswered. 


30 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


In  his  able  treatise  of  u  Antisemitism, 
Its  History  and  Causes/  ’  Bernard  La- 
zare,  in  summing  up  his  views  on  the 
fate  of  antisemitism,  says: 

4  4  We  have  seen  then  that  the  causes 
of  antisemitism  are,  in  their  nature, 
ethnic,  religious,  political  ard  eco¬ 
nomic.  They  are  all  causes  of  far- 
reaching  importance,  and  they  exist 
not  because  of  the  Jew  alone,  nor  be¬ 
cause  of  his  neighbors  alone,  but 
principally  because  of  prevailing  so¬ 
cial  conditions.  Ignorant  of  the  real 
cause  of  their  sentiments,  those  who 
profess  antisemitism  justify  their 
opinion  by  accusations  against  the 
Jew  which,  as  we  have  seen,  do  not  at 
all  agree  with  facts.  Charges  racial, 
charges  religious,  charges  political 
and  economic,  none  of  these  griev¬ 
ances  of  antisemitism  are  well  found¬ 
ed.  Some,  like  the  ethnic  grievances, 
arise  from  a  false  conception  of  race; 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


31 


others  like  the  religions  and  political 
charges  are  due  to  a  narrow  and  in¬ 
complete  interpretation  of  historical 
evolution ;  and  last  of  all,  the  economic 
count,  has  its  justification  in  the  ne¬ 
cessity  of  concealing  the  strife  going 
on  within  the  capitalist  class.  None 
of  these  accusations  is  justified.  It  is 
no  more  correct  to  say  that  the  Jew  is 
a  pure  Semite  than  it  would  be  to  say 
the  European  peoples  are  pure  Ar¬ 
yans.  There  is,  in  fact,  no  legitimate 
basis  for  the  very  notion  of  Aryan 
and  Semite,  one  superior  to  the  other. 
We  have  seen  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  race  in  the  sense  in  which 
the  word  is  generally  employed;  that 
is,  to  denote  a  human,  aggregate,  de¬ 
scended  from  the  same  pair  of  primi¬ 
tive  ancestors,  and  suffering  no  ad¬ 
mixture  of  foreign  elements  through¬ 
out  the  entire  course  of  its  develop¬ 
ment.  The  belief  which  made  purity 
of  blood  the  basis  of  communal  life, 


32 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


even  though  it  must  have  been  justi¬ 
fied  at  a  time  when  humanity  consist¬ 
ed  of  a  number  of  minute  and  hetero¬ 
geneous  groups,  was  no  longer  tenable 
when  these  groups  united  to  form 
cities.  The  idea,  nevertheless,  per¬ 
sisted  and  became  an  ethnological 
fiction,  which  ancient  cities  embel¬ 
lished  with  legends  in  recounting  the 
lives  of  their  heroic  founders.  The 
fiction  changed  when  cities  in  turn  be¬ 
gan  to  unite,  and  nations  arose ;  but  it 
survived  just  the  same  and  gave  rise 
to  the  construction  of  interminable 
genealogies  for  the  purpose  of  estab¬ 
lishing  a  common  descent  for  all  the 
members  of  the  same  State. 

“ .  .  .  The  J ews  are  not  in  them¬ 

selves  the  creators  of  present  condi¬ 
tions,  but  merely  by  the  force  of  in¬ 
herited  habits  have  been  more  able  to 
adapt  themselves  to  prevailing  cir¬ 
cumstances.  They  are  not  the  foun¬ 
ders  of  this  capitalistic,  financiering, 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


33 


stock- jobbing,  trading,  manufactur¬ 
ing,  society  of  ours,  though  they  have 
profited  by  it  more  than  any  others. 
They  enjoy  at  present  many  great 
advantages,  not  because  they  resort 
to  methods  of  procedure  which  are 
unfair  or  dishonest,  as  their  adver¬ 
saries  declare,  but  because  in  the 
course  of  centuries  hostile  legislation, 
religious  persecutions  and  the  politi¬ 
cal  and  social  restrictions  under 
which  they  lived  have  served  to  pre¬ 
pare  them  for  the  present  form  of 
society,  by  equipping  them  with  su¬ 
perior  weapons  for  the  daily  struggle 
of  life. 

“  Still  though  the  Jews  are  not  a 
race,  they  were,  until  our  own  days,  a 
nation.  They  did  not  fail  to  perpetu¬ 
ate  their  national  characteristics, 
their  religion  and  their  theological 
code,  which  was  at  the  same  time  a 
social  code.” 


34 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


Mr.  Lazare  then  goes  on  discussing  at 
length  the  anti-Judaism  of  modern 
times,  showing  it  to  be  the  product  of 
the  Jewish  spirit  of  national  exclusive¬ 
ness  and  of  a  reaction  on  the  part  of  the 
conservative  spirit  against  the  tend¬ 
encies  set  into  motion  by  the  Revolution 
in  economic  causes,  as  are  expressed  in 
the  struggle  between  the  proletariat  and 
the  industrial  and  financial  classes.  He 
winds  up  thus: 

“.  .  .  This  antisemitic  move¬ 

ment,  in  its  origin  reactionary,  has 
become  transformed  and  is  acting  now 
for  the  advantage  of  the  revolution¬ 
ary  cause.  Antisemitism  stirs  up  the 
middle  class,  the  small  tradesman,  and 
sometimes  the  peasant,  against  the 
Jewish  capitalist,  but  in  doing  so  it 
gently  leads  them  toward  socialism, 
prepares  them  for  anarchy,  infuses  in 
them  a  hatred  for  all  capitalists,  and, 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


35 


more  than  that,  for  capital  in  the 
abstract. 

“And  thus,  unconsciously,  antisemi¬ 
tism  is  working  its  own  ruin,  for  it 
carries  in  itself  the  germ  of  destruc¬ 
tion.  Nor  can  it  escape  its  fate.  In 
preparing  the  way  for  Socialism  and 
Communism,  it  is  laboring  at  the  elim¬ 
ination  not  only  of  the  economic  cause, 
but  also  of  the  religious  and  ethnic 
causes  which  have  engendered  it,  and 
which  will  disappear  with  this  society 
of  ours,  of  which  they  are  the 
products. 

“Such,  then,  is  the  probable  fate  of 
modern  antisemitism.  I  have  tried  to 
show  how  it  may  be  traced  back  to  the 
ancient  hatred  against  the  Jews:  how 
it  persisted  after  the  emancipation  of 
the  Jews,  how  it  has  grown  and  what 
are  its  manifestations.  I  have  at¬ 
tempted  to  discover  the  reasons  for 
this  existence,  and  having  determined 
those,  have  ventured  to  predict  its  fu- 


36 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


ture  on  the  basis  of  them.  In  every 
way  I  am  led  to  believe  that  it  must 
ultimately  perish,  and  that  it  will  per¬ 
ish  for  the  various  reasons  which  I 
have  indicated,  because  the  Jew  is 
undergoing  a  process  of  change;  be¬ 
cause  religious,  political,  social  and 
economic  conditions  are  likewise 
changing;  hut  above  all,  because  anti¬ 
semitism  is  one  of  the  last,  though 
most  long  lived,  manifestations  of  that 
old  spirit  of  reaction  and  narrow  con¬ 
servatism,  which  is  vainly  attempting 
to  arrest  the  onward  movement  of  the 
Revolution.  ’  ’ 

According  to  Mr.  Lazare,  then,  anti¬ 
semitism  is  the  effect  of  four  distinct 
causes — ethnic,  religious,  political  and 
economic,  and  these  are  caused  not  by 
the  Jews,  but  by  prevailing  social  con¬ 
ditions.  The  antisemites  are  ignorant  of 
the  real  cause  of  their  sentiments  and 
therefore  justify  them  by  accusations 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


37 


against  the  Jews  who,  in  the  course  of 
centuries  of  hostile  legislation,  religious 
persecution  and  political  and  social  re¬ 
strictions  under  which  they  lived,  were 
prepared  for  the  present  form  of  society, 
and  are  equipped  with  superior  weapons 
for  the  daily  struggle  of  life.  Finally, 
antisemitism  is  the  product  of  the  Jew¬ 
ish  national  exclusiveness. 

The  real  cause  for  antisemitism  then, 
according  to  Lazare,  is  Jewish  national 
exclusiveness,  of  which  fact  the  anti- 
semites  are  ignorant. 

Why  those  who  profess  antisemitism 
should  be  ignorant  of  this  real  cause  of 
their  antagonistic  sentiments  to  the 
Jews,  and  why  there  should  there¬ 
fore  he  four  other  causes  for  antisemi¬ 
tism,  Mr.  Lazare  fails  to  explain,  and 
the  Jewish  Question  only  appears  to  be 
still  more  involved  and  remains  un¬ 
answered. 

No  less  interesting  are  the  views  of 
the  noted  French  author,  Anotole  Leroy- 


38 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


Beaulieu,  who  in  his  work,  “  Israel 
Among  the  Nations,’ ’  expresses  views 
most  of  which  are  similar  to  those  of  Mr. 
Lazare.  In  his  introductory  remarks 
Mr.  Beaulieu  says : 

.  .  Antisemitism  is  consist¬ 

ent  with  neither  the  principles  nor  the 
genius  of  our  nation  (France).  It 
came  to  us  from  the  outside,  from 
countries  which  have  neither  our 
spirit  nor  our  traditions.  It  came  to 
us  from  across  the  Rhine,  from  old 
Germany,  always  ready  for  religious 
quarrels,  and  always  imbued  with  the 
spirit  of  caste ;  from  new  Germany,  all 
inflated  with  race  pride  and  scornful 
of  whatever  is  not  Teutonic. 

“Antisemitism  may  be  traced  also 
to  Russia,  to  that  huge  and  shapeless 
Russia,  which,  with  its  steppes  and 
forests,  has  remained  isolated  from 
the  great  currents  of  modern  life;  to 
holy,  Orthodox  Russia,  half  Oriental, 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


39 


half  Asiatic,  which  endeavors  to  find 
its  national  nnity  in  its  religions 
unity,  and  which  regards  the  Catholic 
and  Lutheran  with  little  more  favor 
than  the  Israelite;  to  that  autocratic 
Russia,  which  differs  from  us  in  all 
its  institutions,  as  well  as  in  all  its 
conditions,  be  they  economic,  political, 
religious  or  social.  Whatever  sym¬ 
pathy  we  may  feel  with  the  Slavonic 
mind  or  the  Russian  spirit  the  Rus¬ 
sians,  who  have  so  often  emulated  us, 
would  be  greatly  astonished  to  see  us 
copying  them;  as  well  might  one  pro¬ 
pose  to  the  Czar  to  model  the  govern¬ 
ment  of  his  moujiks  and  cossacks  on 
that  of  the  French  Republic. 

.  .  It  must  not  be  inferred 

from  what  has  been  said  that  the  com¬ 
plaints  of  the  antisemites  are  wholly 
imaginary.  By  no  means.  Whether 
they  attack  our  private  or  our  public 
morals  and  customs,  many  of  their 
complaints  are  but  too  well  founded. 


40 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


Abroad,  as  well  as  at  home,  and  most 
especially,  perhaps,  in  our  republican 
France,  they  are  right,  these  noisy  an- 
tisemites,  in  loudly  denouncing  certain 
governmental  methods,  certain  prac¬ 
tices  which  seem  about  to  take  root  in 
the  life  of  modern  nations.  Antisemi¬ 
tism  may  have  been,  in  its  time,  a  pro¬ 
test  on  the  part  of  the  public  con¬ 
science  against  culpable  concessions 
of  men  in  office,  against  the  venality 
of  politicians  and  the  domination,  at 
once  mysterious  and  contemptuous, 
of  stock-jobbing  interlopers.  Despite 
its  excesses  and  outrages,  antisemi¬ 
tism  is  within  its  rightful  province 
when  it  assails  the  worship  of  money, 
the  scandalous  barter  of  political  in¬ 
fluences,  and  the  shameless  exploita¬ 
tion  of  the  people  by  the  men  whom 
they  have  elected;  or,  again,  when  it 
unmasks  the  hypocritical  intolerance 
of  inconsistent  free-thinkers,  who 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


41 


have  erected  irreligion  and  corruption 
into  a  method  of  government. 

“.  .  .  Modern  society  is  ailing 

indeed,  more  ailing  than  the  most  hon¬ 
est  antisemite  imagines.  The  error 
of  antisemitism  lies  in  its  misappre¬ 
hension  of  the  origin  and  seat  of  the 
evil.  It  sees,  or  is  willing  to  see,  but 
one  of  the  symptoms,  and  it  calls  this 
symptom  the  cause  of  the  disease. 
Antisemitism  is  essentially  1  simple- 
minded  ’  in  the  literal  sense  of  the 
word.  It  fails  to  grasp  the  complex¬ 
ity  of  social  phenomena.  But  this 
failure  which  should  prove  its  ruin 
is  largely  the  cause  of  its  success  with 
the  masses,  who  in  their  simplicity 
are  always  carried  away  by  that 
which  they  deem  simple. 

“Even  if  the  Jews  had  all  the  vices 
and  all  the  power  which  the  hatred  of 
their  enemies  sees  tit  to  ascribe  to 
them,  it  were  none  the  less  childish  to 
discover  in  a  handful  of  Semites  the 


42 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


source  of  the  evils  that  afflict  modern 
society. 

“It  is  not  true  that  in  order  to  re¬ 
store  it  to  health  we  need  but  to  elimi¬ 
nate  the  Semite,  as  the  surgeon’s  knife 
eradicates  a  cyst  or  a  malignant  ex¬ 
crescence.  The  extent  and  gravity  of 
the  evil  are  of  a  different  nature.  The 
evil  is  in  ourselves,  in  our  blood,  in 
the  very  marrow  of  our  bones.  To 
cure  us  it  will  not  be  enough  to  re¬ 
move  a  foreign  body  from  our  flesh. 
Though  every  Jew  be  banished  from 
French  soil,  though  Israel  be  swept 
from  the  face  of  Europe,  France 
would  not  be  one  whit  more  healthy, 
nor  Europe  in  any  better  state.  The 
first  condition  of  a  cure  is  a  knowl¬ 
edge  of  the  nature  of  one’s  malady. 
Now,  antisemitism  deceives  us;  it 
blinds  us  to  our  condition  by  trying  to 
make  us  believe  that  the  cause  of  the 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


43 


evil  is  external  instead  of  internal. 
There  is  no  more  dangerous  error. 
We  are  afflicted  with  an  internal  trou¬ 
ble,  due  to  our  constitution  and  our 
entire  mode  of  living;  and  the  anti- 
semites  insist  upon  telling  us  over 
and  over  again  that  it  is  but  a  super¬ 
ficial  ailment,  brought  on  by  chance, 
and  foreign  to  our  race  and  our  blood. 
Even  when  they  boast  of  exposing 
our  secret  wounds,  they  misconstrue 
their  nature;  consequently,  instead  of 
furnishing  a  cure  for  them,  they  are 
in  great  danger  of  inflaming  them 
still  more. 

“Such  will  be,  I  doubt  not,  the  feel¬ 
ing  of  every  reader  who  is  sufficiently 
thoughtful  and  independent  to  base 
his  opinions  upon  reflections,  and  not 
upon  the  antipathies  of  the  mob. 
Antisemitism,  even  when  most  justi¬ 
fied  in  its  complaints,  is  mistaken  as 
to  the  source  of  our  evils.’ ’ 


44 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


In  another  part  of  the  work,  Mr. 

Beaulieu  asks: 

“.  .  .  Whence  comes  this  steady 

and  involuntary  antipathy?  Has  it 
no  other  cause  than  the  instinctive 
survival  of  the  prejudices  of  our  fore¬ 
fathers?  Honestly  speaking,  I  would 
not  dare  to  assert  this.  In  order  to 
account  for  it  we  must  look  more 
closely  at  the  Jewish  race,  whose  con¬ 
tact  is  still  distasteful  to  so  many  men 
of  less  noble  blood;  especially  as,  in 
order  to  understand  the  race  well,  it 
is  not  enough  that  we  should  know  of 
what  ethnic  or  religious  elements  it  is 
composed.  Before  deciding  what  place 
the  modern  nations  should  assign  to 
the  Jews,  it  will  be  well  to  study  the 
essential  traits  of  the  Jewish  mind 
and  character.  The  investigation  will, 
I  think,  bring  out  some  interesting 
problems  in  psychology.  ’ ’ 

Mr.  Beaulieu  then  goes  on  with  an  in- 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 


45 


quiry  into  the  physiology,  psychology, 
genius,  spirit  and  particularism  of  the 
Jew.  He  finds  the  Jewish  characteris¬ 
tics  favorable  to  Israel,  and  speculates 
on  the  cause  of  antisemitism  which  he 
cannot  discover,  although  he  gives  many 
possible  causes.  After  a  diligent  search 
under  the  literary  method,  he  fails  to 
solve  the  problem. 

We  could  thus  give  the  views  of  many 
other  noted  authors  on  the  Jewish 
Question,  but  as  we  said  before,  while 
they  all  display  brilliancy  of  style  and 
thought  and  give  us  bright  glimpses  of 
truth,  the  truth  itself  is  not  discovered. 
On  none  of  their  theories  can  the  mind 
settle  in  the  conviction  that  it  has 
traced  the  real  primary  cause  of  anti¬ 
semitism. 


II. 


Of  the  Prejudice  Against  the  Jew. 

From  the  foregoing  the  reader  un¬ 
doubtedly  observed  that  every  phase  of 
antisemitism,  no  matter  in  what  place 
and  with  which  class  of  people  it  is 
found,  always  circles  around  one  point, 
namely,  prejudice. 

We  must  therefore  bear  in  mind  that 
at  the  bottom  of  Judeophobia  there  is 
always  that  prejudice  which  must  be 
the  real  cause  of  all  accusations  against 
the  Jews. 

The  term  “ Antisemitism,”  as  we  have 
seen,  and  according  to  the  Jewish  Ency¬ 
clopedia,  has  its  origin  in  the  ethnologi¬ 
cal  theory  that  the  Jews,  as  Semites,  are 
entirely  different  from  the  Aryan  or 
Indo-European  populations,  and  can 
never  be  amalgamated  with  them.  The 
word  implies  that  the  Jews  are  not  ob- 

46 


PREJUDICE  AGAINST  THE  JEW.  47 


jected  to  on  account  of  their  religion, 
but  on  account  of  their  racial  character¬ 
istics.  As  such  are  mentioned:  greed,  a 
special  aptitude  for  money-making,  aver¬ 
sion  to  hard  work,  clannishness  and  ob¬ 
trusiveness,  lack  of  social  tact,  and  espe¬ 
cially  of  patriotism.  Finally  the  term  is 
used  to  justify  resentment  for  every 
crime  or  objectionable  act  committed  by 
an  individual  Jew. 

From  what  we  have  already  learned 
we  know  that  the  foregoing  suppositions 
regarding  the  Jews  are  groundless,  that 
the  prejudice  against  the  Jews  is  not  the 
effect  of  any  or  all  of  the  said  accusa¬ 
tions  brought  against  them,  but  that  the 
accusations  are  made  because  of  the 
prejudice. 

We  now  begin  to  realize  wherein  the 
difficulty  of  the  Jewish  Question  lies.  If 
instead  of  that  prejudice  there  were 
some  definite  idea,  if  the  Gentile  could 
actually  point  to  a  definite  reason  for 
his  dislike  of  the  Jew,  there  would  be  no 


48  PREJUDICE  AGAINST  THE  JEW. 

riddle  at  all,  since  the  cause  of  the  dis¬ 
like  would  be  clear.  But  because  what 
we  have  before  us  is  prejudice ,  which 
does  not  explain  the  real  cause  for  that 
sentiment,  it  makes  of  the  Jewish  Ques¬ 
tion  a  riddle.  In  that  also  we  find  the 
reason  why  so  many  able  authors  could 
not  arrive  at  any  definite  conclusion  on 
this  problem. 

Mr.  Charles  Waldstein,  in  his  work, 
“The  Jewish  Question  and  the  Mission 
of  the  Jews,”  after  considering  the 
numerous  antisemitic  outbreaks  in  vari¬ 
ous  countries,  could  after  all  not  find 
some  definite  point  on  which  he  could 
settle  as  the  cause  of  the  violent  Jude- 
ophobia;  and  he  asks: 

“Is  there  a  Jewish  Question  at 
all?”  He  then  continues:  “I  main¬ 
tain  that  there  is  not,  in  the  sense  in 
which  we  speak  of  a  Labor  Question, 
or  the  Eastern  Question,  or  the  Home 
Rule  Question.  For  the  element  of 


PREJUDICE  AGAINST  THE  JEW.  49 


unity  is  hiding  the  subject  upon  which 
it  is  proposed  to  establish  a  question ; 
and  the  attributes  which  it  represents 
are  different  from,  nay,  opposed  to, 
one  another  according  to  the  circum¬ 
stances  in  which  it  has  been  placed.  ’  ’ 

In  concluding  his  preface,  the  same 
author  says: 

“But  at  the  end  I  ask  myself: 
whether  all  I  have  written  in  this  book 
will  be  of  any  avail  to  dispel  the  preju¬ 
dice  among  enemies  of  the  Jews?” 

In  the  same  doubtful  tone  Mr.  G.  F. 
Abbott  in  his  book,  “Israel  in  Europe,” 
says : 

“The  Jewish  Question — a  question 
than  which  none  possess  a  deeper  in¬ 
terest  for  the  student  of  the  past,  or  a 
stronger  fascination  for  the  specula¬ 
tor  of  the  future;  a  question  com¬ 
pared  with  which  the  Eastern,  the 
Irish,  and  all  other  vexed  questions 


50  PREJUDICE  AGAINST  THE  JEW. 


are  but  things  of  yesterday;  a  ques¬ 
tion  which  has  taxed  the  ingenuity  of 
European  statesmen  ever  since  the 
dispersion  of  this  Eastern  people  over 
the  lands  of  the  West.” 

Now,  why  are  all  these  thinkers  so 
perplexed  when  confronted  with  the 
Jewish  Question?  Y/hy  have  other 
vexed  questions,  for  instance,  the  Labor, 
Irish  and  Eastern  questions,  never  been 
regarded  with  such  amazement  and  be¬ 
wilderment  as  this  one?  Why  has  no 
other  question  called  forth  fear  and  su¬ 
perstition  as  the  Jewish  Question  does? 
Why  is  there  an  answer  to  every  other 
question,  and  not  to  this  one? 

Because  in  all  other  vexed  questions 
there  is,  after  all,  a  clear  issue,  some¬ 
thing  definite  on  which  the  mind  can  set¬ 
tle  and  consider,  while  in  tile  Jewish 
Question  there  is  no  clear  issue,  nothing 
definite  before  the  mind.  All  that  the 
mind  can  perceive  is  a  prejudice  against 


i 


PREJUDICE  AGAINST  THE  JEW.  51 


a  people,  the  reason  for  which  is  not 
known  and  cannot  be  discovered. 

The  prejudice  against  the  Jew — if  the 
many  able  authors  who  have  investi¬ 
gated,  searched  and  have  written  on  the 
subject,  had  stopped  at  this  point  only 
and  endeavored  to  look  for  the  mysteri¬ 
ous  cause  of  the  prejudice  instead  of 
wandering  away  in  other  directions  in 
search  for  answers  to  other  questions, 
the  problem  would  have  been  solved 
long  ago. 

What  is  needed  to  solve  this  puzzle  is 
the  cause  of  the  effect ,  which  is  desig¬ 
nated  by  the  word  prejudice,  and  which 
causes  other  effects  most  terrible  to  the 
Jewish  people  and  most  degrading  to 
civilization.  That  cause  we  will  go  in 
search  of  in  the  following  pages. 


III. 


Beginnings  of  Judeophobia. 

After  a  careful  perusal  of  the  history 
of  the  Jews,  we  find  Judeophobia  in  evi¬ 
dence  at  two  distinct  periods  far  from 
each  other.  These  are,  when  the  Israel¬ 
ites  sojourned  with  the  Egyptians,  and 
when,  after  being  a  full-fledged  nation 
for  nearly  a  thousand  years,  they  were 
dispersed  among  the  peoples  of  the 
world. 

During  the  period  of  the  Jewish  exist¬ 
ence  as  a  nation,  there  is  no  evidence  of 
that  repugnance  and  prejudice  which  we 
find  in  the  time  of  Israel’s  Goluth  in 
Egypt  and  his  Goluth  among  the  na¬ 
tions  after  losing  Palestine. 

What  is  remarkable  is  that  we  dis¬ 
cover,  as  we  shall  presently  demon¬ 
strate,  in  the  dislike  of  the  Israelite  by 
the  Egyptian,  and  the  dislike  of  the  Jew 

52 

t 


BEGINNINGS  OF  JUDEOPHOBIA.  53 


by  the  modern  Gentile,  the  same  preju¬ 
dice  as  their  cause  and  the  same  cause 
for  the  prejudice. 

Mr.  Bernard  Lazare  in  Chapter  II.  of 
his  already  mentioned  treatise,  “Anti¬ 
semitism,  Its  History  and  Causes/ 9  very 
ably  sums  up  the  antagonism  against 
Israel  at  the  two  different  periods,  and 
although  we  do  not  agree  with  his  con¬ 
clusion  as  to  the  relation  between  the 
Egyptians  and  the  Israelites,  we  shall 
nevertheless  quote  him  and  then  discuss 
the  proposition,  which  is  of  great  impor¬ 
tance  in  our  inquiry. 

Mr.  Lazare  says : 

“Modern  antisemites  who  are  in 
quest  of  sires  for  themselves,  unhesi¬ 
tatingly  trace  the  first  demonstrations 
against  the  Jews  back  to  the  day  of 
ancient  Egypt.  For  that  purpose  they 
are  particularly  pleased  to  refer  to 
Genesis  xliii,  32,  where  it  is  said: 
‘The  Egyptians  might  not  eat  bread 


54  BEGINNINGS  OF  JUDEOPHOBIA. 

with  the  Hebrews;  for  that  it  is  i*n 
abomination  unto  the  Egyptians/ 
They  also  rely  upon  a  few  verses  of 
Exodus,  among  them  the  following: 
*  Behold,  the  people  of  the  children  of 
Israel  are  more  and  mightier  than  we ; 
come  on,  let  us  deal  wisely  with  them, 
lest  they  multiply/  (Exodus  i,  9,  10.) 

“It  is  certain  that  the  sons  of 
Jacob  who  came  to  the  land  of  Goshen 
under  the  Shepherd  Pharaoh  Aphobis 
were  treated  by  the  Egyptians  with 
the  same  contempt  as  their  brothers, 
the  Hyksos,  referred  to  in  hiero¬ 
glyphic  texts  as  lepers,  called  also 
‘ plague ’  and  4 pest’  in  some  inscrip¬ 
tions.  They  arrived  at  that  very 
epoch  when  a  very  strong  national 
sentiment  manifested  itself  against 
the  Asiatic  invaders,  hated  for  their 
cruelty ;  this  sentiment  soon  led  to  the 
war  of  independence,  which  resulted 
in  the  final  victory  of  Ahmos  I.,  and 
the  enslavement  of  the  Hebrews.  How- 


BEGINNINGS  OF  JUDEOPHOBIA. 


55 


ever,  unless  one  is  a  violent  anti- Jew, 
it  is  impossible  to  perceive  in  those 
remote  disturbances  anything  beyond 
a  mere  incident  in  a  struggle  between 
conquerors  and  conquered. 

4 ‘There  is  no  antisemitism  until  the 
Jews,  having  abandoned  their  native 
land,  settle  as  immigrants  in  foreign 
countries  and  come  into  contact  with 
natives  or  older  settlers,  whose  cus¬ 
toms,  race  and  religion  are  different 
from  those  of  the  Hebrews. 

“Accordingly  the  history  of  Haman 
and  Mordecai  may  be  taken  as  the  be¬ 
ginning  of  antisemitism,  and  the  anti- 
semites  have  not  failed  so  to  do.  This 
view  is,  perhaps,  more  correct. 
Though  the  historical  reality  of  the 
book  of  Esther  can  scarcely  be  relied 
upon,  still  it  is  worthy  of  note  that  its 
author  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Ilaman 
some  of  the  complaints,  which,  at  a 
later  period,  are  uttered  by  Tacitus 
and  other  Latin  writers.  ‘And  Haman 


56  BEGINNINGS  OF  JUDEQPHOBIA. 

said  unto  the  king,  Ahasuerus :  there 
is  a  certain  people  scattered  abroad 
and  dispersed  among  the  peoples  in 
all  the  provinces  of  thy  kingdom;  and 
their  laws  are  diverse  from  all  peo¬ 
ple;  neither  keep  they  the  king’s 
laws.’  ”  (Esther  iii,  8.) 

That  the  cause  of  the  prejudice  on  the 
part  of  the  Egyptians  against  the  Israel¬ 
ites  was  the  same  as  that  existing  since 
the  time  of  Haman,  we  will  demonstrate 
in  the  course  of  this  work.  Let  us  first 
consider  Hainan’s  hatred  of  the  Jews  in 
the  kingdom  of  Ahasuerus. 

Haman ’s  complaint  to  the  king  was 
against  all  the  Jews,  but  his  wrath  was 
kindled  by  one  Jew — Mordecai. 

In  the  words  of  the  book  Esther : 

“And  all  the  king’s  servants  that 
were  in  the  king’s  gate,  bent  the  knee 
and  prostrated  themselves  to  Haman; 


BEGINNINGS  OF  JUDEOPHOBIA.  57 


for  so  had  the  king  commanded  con¬ 
cerning  him;  but  Mordecai  bent  not 
the  knee  nor  prostrated  himself. 

“Then  said  the  king’s  servants, 
who  were  in  the  king’s  gate,  unto  Mor¬ 
decai,  ‘  Why  transgressest  thou  the 
king’s  command?’ 

“Now  it  came  to  pass  when  they 
spoke  unto  him  day  by  day,  and  he 
hearkened  not  unto  them,  that  they 
told  it  to  Haman,  to  see  whether  the 
words  of  Mordecai  would  be  able  to 
stand;  for  he  had  told  them  that  he 
was  a  Jew.  (Note  this  last  sentence.) 

“And  when  Haman  saw  that  Mor¬ 
decai  bent  not  the  knee,  nor  prostrated 
himself  for  him,  Haman  became  full 
of  fury. 

“But  it  appeared  too  contemptible 
in  his  eyes  to  lay  his  hand  on  Morde¬ 
cai  alone ;  for  they  had  told  him  of  the 
people  of  Mordecai ;  therefore  Haman 
sought  to  destroy  all  the  Jews  that 
were  throughout  all  the  kingdom  of 


58  BEGINNINGS  OF  JUDEOPHOBIA. 

t 

Achashverosh,  the  people  of  Morde- 

cai.”  (Esther  iii,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6.) 

Here  is  a  clear  case  of  prejudice 
against  the  ivhole  Jewish  people.  Be¬ 
cause  Mordecai  offended  him,  Haman  at 
once  charged  all  the  Jews  of  the  king¬ 
dom  with  insubordination  and  asked  the 
king  to  destroy  them  all. 

From  the  narrative  it  is  evident  that 
Haman  was  prejudiced  against  the  Jews 
before  the  affair  with  Mordecai.  The 
latter’s  refusal  to  bend  his  knee  was 
only  the  spur  to  turn  the  prejudice  into 
a  furious  hatred  which  only  the  blood  of 
all  the  Jews  could  satisfy.  If  there  had 
been  no  prejudice  against  the  whole 
Jewish  people,  it  would  have  been  im¬ 
possible  for  Haman  to  think  of  destroy¬ 
ing  all  Jews  because  one  transgressed 
against  him. 

From  the  foregoing  observations  we 
always  arrive  at  one  and  the  same  con¬ 
clusion,  that  prejudice  is  at  the  bottom 


BEGINNINGS  OF  JUDEOPHOBIA.  59 


of  all  accusations  against  the  Jews; 
hence,  prejudice  is  the  cause  of  antisemi¬ 
tism. 

Causa  latet,  vis  est  notissima.  What 
is  the  cause  of  the  prejudice  ? 


i 


IV. 

Of  the  Factors  in  the  Problem. 

We  will  now  approach  the  old  Jewish 
Question  with  a  view  of  finding  its  solu¬ 
tion. 

Our  first  step  is  to  ascertain  what  fac¬ 
tors  of  a  positive  nature  we  are  given 
in  this  problem. 

We  perceive  that  there  are  two  cer¬ 
tain  factors — Gentile  and  Jew.  There 
are  no  other  factors  and  our  attention 
must  be  directed  toward  these  two  only 
without  trying  to  create  others. 

There  is  a  certain  phenomenon  always 
in  evidence  in  the  relations  between  the 
two.  This  phenomenon  is  a  prejudice 
manifested  by  the  Gentile  against  the 
Jew.  The  relation  in  that  respect  be¬ 
tween  the  two  is  ably  and  briefly  summed 
up  in  the  article,  “The  Public  Estimate 
of  the  Jew,”  which  appeared  in  the  New 
York  Independent ,  November  8,  1906; 

among  other  things  it  read: 

60 


FACTORS  IN  THE  PROBLEM. 


61 


.  .  Whether  it  is  socially, 

whether  as  a  citizen  in  many  lands,  in 
many  forms  somewhere,  in  some  form 
everywhere,  there  is  still  a  ban,  a 
prejudice,  at  least  an  exclamation  or 
an  interrogation  point.  Theoretical 
expression  on  paper  and  practical 
working  of  affairs  are,  as  to  him  (the 
Jew),  at  variance.” 

We  thus  have  two  certain  factors  and 
one  uncertain  one: 

(1)  Gentile,  (2)  Jew,  (3)  Prejudice 
(manifested  by  the  first  against  the 
second). 

The  question  which  arises  here  is  why 
that  prejudice  against  the  Jew? 

That  why  is  the  indefinite  something, 
the  X,  the  unknown  quantity  of  our 
problem. 

If  we  succeed  in  discovering  the  cause 
for  the  prejudice,  our  task  will  be  com¬ 
pleted — the  Jewish  Question  solved. 


V. 


Of  the  Relation  and  Nature  of  the 

Factors. 

In  our  problem,  we  have  seen,  there 
are  three  factors,  two  certain  and  one 
uncertain:  Gentile,  Jew  and  Prejudice. 

We  know  that  it  is  the  Gentile  who 
entertains  the  prejudice.  We  also  know 
that  the  Prejudice  is  directed  against 
the  Jew.  We  consequently  understand 
the  relation  of  the  Gentile  and  Jew,  but 
we  do  not  know  to  what  prejudice  is  re¬ 
lated;  in  other  words,  what  is  the  cause 
of  the  prejudice.  It  is  clear,  however, 
that  the  relation  of  the  prejudice  to  that 
indefinite  something,  to  the  X  of  our 
problem,  must  necessarily  be  equal  to 
the  Prejudice  of  the  Gentile  against  the 
Jew,  since  it  is  the  same  Prejudice 
which  is  observed  as  the  relation  of  the 

two  positive  factors  in  the  problem. 

62 


RELATION  OF  THE  FACTORS. 


63 


We  shall  therefore  (although  it  will 
appear  unconventional)  formulate  our 
problem  in  the  form  of  a  formula  as 
follows : 

The  relation  between  the  Prejudice  of 
the  Gentile  and  the  Jew  is  equal  to  the 
relation  of  the  Prejudice  to  X  or, 

Prejudice  of  Gentile:  Jew::  Preju¬ 
dice:  X. 

This  means  that  the  prejudice  of  the 
Gentile  against  the  Jew  is  equal  to  and 
really  consists  in  his  prejudice  against 
some  cause,  X. 

We  have  learned  that  the  prejudice 
against  the  Jew  is  hie  et  ubique.  Its 
manifestations  depend  upon  the  cultural 
status  of  the  people  which  entertains  it, 
hut  it  has  been  in  existence  ever  since 
the  Jewish  dispersion.  The  prejudice 
then  against  the  Jew  is  universal;  hence, 
the  Jewish  Question  is  a  universal  one. 

Having  before  us  three  factors,  it  is 


64 


RELATION  OF  THE  FACTORS. 


now  necessary  to  define  and  understand 
them. 

Gentile  and  Jew,  what  are  they? 

First  of  all,  we  find  that  they  are  both 
members  of  the  white  division  of  the 
human  species;  that  they  belong  to  the 
Caucasian  group.  We  then  discover  that 
neither  of  them  is  purely  Aryan  or  Semi¬ 
tic,  but  both  are  modern  men,  and  that 
the  Jew  as  a  man  is  not  inferior  to  the 
Gentile. 

Even  Ernest  Renan,  who  claims  to 
have  been  the  first  to  recognize  the  in¬ 
feriority  of  the  Semite  to  the  Aryan,  in 
his  “Le  Judaisme  comme  Race  et  comme 
Religion”  (assuming  for  argument’s 
sake  that  his  theory  is  correct),  makes 
the  positive  assertion  that  the  Jews  are 
not  a  Semitic  race,  and  are  in  every  re¬ 
spect  as  good  modern  men  as  the  other 
Aryan  peoples.  The  same  view  is  held 
by  many  scholars  already  mentioned 
and  quoted  and  others. 


RELATION  OF  THE  FACTORS. 


65 


Having  thus  ascertained  the  nature  of 
the  positive  factors,  we  shall  proceed  to 
inquire  into  the  nature  of  the  phenom¬ 
enon — Prejudice. 

Prejudice  is  defined  as  a  judgment  or 
opinion  formed  without  due  examination 
of  the  facts  or  reasons  that  are  essential 
to  a  just  and  impartial  determination; 
a  mental  decision  based  on  other 
grounds  than  reason  or  justice.  In  other 
words,  Prejudice  is  some  kind  of  a  feel¬ 
ing  more  than  anything  else. 

Professor  Joseph  Baldwin,  in  his 
book,  “Psychology  Applied  to  the  Art  of 
Teaching,’ ’  very  simply  sets  forth  and 
defines  the  different  kinds  of  feeling. 
He  says: 

“Feeling. — I  enjoy  and  suffer.  I 
experience  various  feelings  differing 
in  kind.  Some  feelings  are  occa¬ 
sioned  by  sensor-excitations  caused  by 
organic  stimuli ;  these  feelings  are 
organic  sensations.  Some  feelings 


66 


RELATION  OF  THE  FACTORS. 


are  occasioned  by  sensor-excitations 
caused  by  external  stimuli  acting 
through  the  special  senses;  these  feel¬ 
ings  are  special  sensations.  Other 
feelings  are  occasioned  by  ideas ;  these 
feelings  are  emotions.  Feeling  in¬ 
cludes  organic  sensations,  special  sen¬ 
sations  and  emotions.” 

In  another  part  of  the  same  work  Mr. 

Baldwin  says: 

“Law  reigns  in  the  Self -World. — 
Deeper  insight  satisfies  me  that  self 
acts  spontaneously,  but  acts  in  uni¬ 
form  ways.  I  find  that  the  uniform 
ways  in  which  self  acts  are  the  laws 
of  the  mental  economy.  Self  is  sub¬ 
ject  to  mental  laws  of  the  mental 
economy.  Self  is  subject  to  mental 
laws  just  as  matter  is  subject  to  phys¬ 
ical  laws.  Self  must  attend,  in  order 
to  know.  Self  must  ascend  through 
particulars  to  generals.  Self  must  re- 


RELATION  OF  THE  FACTORS. 


67 


call  the  past  through  the  present.  Self 
must  make  effort,  in  order  to  growth. 
Law  reigns  in  the  mind-world.  ’ ’ 

Prejudice,  consequently,  is  an  emo¬ 
tion.  It  is  created  under  some  certain 
mental  law. 

The  phenomena  of  feeling  and  thought 
and  the  laws  of  the  mind  are  treated 
and  explained  by  Psychology. 

Prejudice  is  ever  followed  by  the  feel¬ 
ings  of  dislike  and  hatred;  the  latter 
feelings  are  followed  by  action,  which 
may  be  of  different  forms,  depending 
upon  the  cultural  status  of  the  man.  We 
thus  realize  why  the  forms  of  antisemi¬ 
tism  are  different  among  the  peoples 
where  Jews  are  settled. 

As  we  have  seen  in  the  foregoing 
pages,  the  late  Dr.  Pinsker  has  said  that 
in  the  psychology  of  the  peoples  the 
basis  of  the  prejudice  against  the  Jew¬ 
ish  nation  is  to  be  found,  and  that  other 
factors  besides  not  less  important, 


68 


RELATION  OF  THE  FACTORS. 


which  render  impossible  the  fusion  or 
equalization  of  the  Jews  with  the  other 
peoples,  must  also  be  considered.  Jude- 
ophobia,  he  said,  is  a  psychic  disorder. 
As  a  psychic  disorder  it  is  hereditary 
and  as  a  disease  transmitted  for  two 
thousand  years  it  is  incurable.  His  con¬ 
clusion  was,  that  “the  Jews  are  not  a 
living  nation ;  they  are  everywhere 
aliens,  therefore  they  are  despised.’ ’ 

Here  we  discover  the  error  of  that 
able  scholar.  He  labored  under  the  mis¬ 
taken  impression  that  the  prejudice 
against  the  Jew  lies  in  the  psychology  of 
the  peoples,  which  at  best  is  an  indefinite 
statement,  whereas  it  cannot  lie  else¬ 
where  but  in  the  psychology  of  the  indi¬ 
vidual.  Here  is  also  his  error  in  mis¬ 
taking  prejudice  for  a  psychic  disease 
which  is  hereditary. 

Prejudice  is  no  more  than  a  mental 
emotion  caused  by  a  phenomenon  which 
the  mind  cannot  understand  and  of 
which  it  can  form  no  definite  idea.  As 


RELATION  OF  THE  FACTORS. 


69 


soon  as  the  mind  forms  a  definite  idea 
and  understands  the  phenomenon,  preju¬ 
dice  ceases  of  itself,  that  emotion  is 
gone.  It  is  consequently  no  disease,  but 
the  ignorant  state  of  the  mind.  Igno¬ 
rance  is  certainly  not  hereditary. 

The  same  error  of  Dr.  Pinsker  was 
entertained  by  many  other  writers  on 
the  Jewish  Question,  among  them  also 
Dr.  Herzl.  Dr.  Pinsker  ’&  conclusion 
that  the  fact  of  the  Jew  being  an  alien 
causes  that  prejudice,  was  also  errone¬ 
ous,  as  we  will  further  demonstrate. 

In  a  similar  manner  we  see  the  other 
learned  authors  deviating  from  the 
straight  road  which  the  problem  pre¬ 
sents,  thus  failing  to  reach  a  definite 
point  on  the  question. 

To  proceed  now  with  our  inquiry;  we 
are  aware  that  as  far  as  the  Gentile  is 
concerned  the  cause  for  the  prejudice 
with  him  is  a  psychologic  one.  We  have 
thus  ascertained  what  road  we  have  to 
take  in  our  inquiry  with  the  Gentile. 


70 


RELATION  OF  THE  FACTORS. 


Knowing  that  it  is  within  his  psychology 
we  cannot  make  the  blunder  of  looking 
for  it  somewhere  else. 

We  will  accordingly  amend  our  form¬ 
ula  thus: 

The  relation  of  the  Mental  attitude  of 
Gentile  to  the  Jew  is  equal  to  the  rela¬ 
tion  of  Prejudice  to  cause,  X:  or, 

Mental  attitude  of  Gentile:  Jew:: 
Prejudice:  X. 

We  have  to  discover  what  occurs  in 
the  mind  of  the  Gentile  when  he  comes 
in  contact  with  a  Jew,  in  order  to  get 
a  clear  idea  of  his  emotion  of  prejudice. 
We  shall  therefore  have  to  use  with 
him  introspection. 

At  this  stage  we  have  to  consider 
another  phase  of  the  problem. 

Emotions  are  by  themselves  effects 
which  must  necessarily  be  caused  by 
some  things.  Without  anything  to  cause 
them  there  cannot  be  any  emotions. 

In  our  problem  we  see  that  there  is 


RELATION  OF  THE  FACTORS. 


71 


the  emotion  of  prejudice  within  the 
Gentile  against  the  Jew,  and  the  ques¬ 
tion,  therefore,  is  what  causes  that  emo¬ 
tion. 

Since  we  have  no  other  factors  but 
Gentile  and  Jew  and  prejudice,  and 
since  the  prejudice  is  manifested  by  the 
first  against  the  second,  it  is  obvious 
that  it  must  be  the  latter  who  causes 
that  emotion  within  the  psychology  of 
the  former;  hence  our  answer  obtained 
is  that  the  Jew  calls  forth  the  emotion 
of  prejudice  within  the  Gentile. 

This  answer  shows  us  what  other  road 
we  must  take  in  order  to  arrive  at  a 
solution  of  our  problem.  Since  it  is  the 
Jew  who  causes  the  emotion  of  preju¬ 
dice  within  the  mind  of  the  Gentile,  we 
have  also  to  observe  the  Jew.  With  him 
we  must  use  our  sense-perception. 

As  sense-perception  is  an  easier  pro¬ 
cedure  than  introspection,  our  next  step 
will  then  be  to  observe  the  Jew  and  en¬ 
deavor  to  find  what  there  is  about  him 


72 


RELATION  OF  THE  FACTORS. 


which  causes  that  prejudice  against 
him.  Is  it  his  appearance,  his  actions, 
or  some  other  trait  in  his  person? 

We  accordingly  continue  our  inquiry 
and  discover  a  most  remarkable  fact. 


VI. 


Man  and  Jew. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  Jews.  Some 
Jews  are  recognized  as  Jews  by  reason 
of  their  physiognomy,  manner  of  dress, 
or  speech;  other  Jews  cannot  so  be  rec¬ 
ognized.  In  neither  of  these  classes  do 
we  find  anything  particularly  objection¬ 
able  or  something  which  should  call 
forth  prejudice.  They  are  not  worse 
than,  and  are  as  good  as,  Gentiles. 

Failing  to  discover  anything  which 
should  justify  the  prejudice,  we  resort 
to  some  experiment.  We  introduce  a 
J ew  of  each  class  to  a  Gentile.  The  one 
who  cannot  be  recognized  as  a  Jew  we 
permit  to  go  unrecognized  as  such.  We 
then  discover  that  the  Gentile  has  a 
prejudice  against  the  man  in  whom  he 
recognized  the  Jew,  against  the  other 
he  entertains  no  such  emotion.  On  the 


73 


74 


MAN  AND  JEW. 


contrary,  he  enjoys  the  other’s  company 
and  sometimes  even  prefers  him  to 
others. 

After  the  lapse  of  some  time  we  dis¬ 
close  to  the  Gentile  the  identity  of  his 
friend — the  Jew.  We  observe  a  change 
coming  over  the  Gentile.  Unperceived 
by  himself  the  prejudice  appears  within 
him.  As  time  goes  on  that  emotion  be¬ 
gins  to  do  its  work,  he  feels  already  a 
dislike  against  the  recognized  Jew,  and 
the  least  dispute  which  may  happen  to 
arise  between  the  two  will  lead  to  a 
strong  dislike  or  hatred  on  the  part  of 
the  Gentile.  At  any  rate,  there  will  ever 
be  that  4  4  exclamation  or  interrogation 
point”  deep  within  the  mind  of  the  Gen¬ 
tile.  There  already  is  a  something 
which  mars  the  friendship  between  the 
two,  and  the  Jew  who  was  much  es¬ 
teemed  and  even  loved  before  becomes 
suddenly  or  gradually  an  object  of  fear, 
disrespect  and  even  hate. 

This  wonderful  phenomenon  is  cer- 


MAN  AND  JEW. 


75 


tainly  very  puzzling  and  we  try  another 
experiment. 

A  Gentile  who  by  his  looks  resembles 
a  Jew  is  introduced  to  a  Gentile,  the  lat¬ 
ter  mistaking  him  for  a  Jew.  The  result 
is  that  from  the  very  first  minute  the 
prejudice  is  there.  When  the  Gentile  is 
informed  that  the  person  is  not  a  Jew, 
the  prejudice  vanishes  as  if  by  magic. 

Much  perplexed  by  these  experiments, 
we  ask  the  Gentile  for  a  reason,  hut  he 
is  unable  to  explain  those  phenomena. 
No  matter  whether  the  Gentile  is  a  con¬ 
servative  or  a  radical,  ignorant  or  highly 
educated,  an  orthodox  or  an  atheist,  the 
result  is  always  the  same.  Even  if  the 
Gentile  tries  to  convince  himself  that 
there  is  nothing  the  matter  with  him  as 
to  his  feelings  for  the  Jew,  he  is  mis¬ 
taken.  Deep  within  him  there  is  the 
emotion  of  prejudice  smouldering  and 
needs  only  the  slightest  provocation  to 
be  turned  into  a  flame  of  hatred. 

At  first  this  phenomenon  seems  very 


76 


MAN  AND  JEW. 


perplexing  and  baffling  to  the  mind,  but 
upon  a  second  consideration  it  appears 
simple  of  explanation. 

We  have  observed  that  the  emotion  of 
prejudice  against  a  man  arises  within 
the  Gentile  the  moment  the  latter  gets 
the  consciousness  that  the  former  is  a 
Jew,  otherwise  that  emotion  is  absent. 
It  is  evident,  then,  that  it  is  the  name 
Jew  which  causes  that  emotion. 

This  discovery  is  of  great  moment  in 
our  inquiry,  for  it  expressly  establishes 
the  fact  that  while  there  is  nothing 
wrong  about  the  man — Jew,  there  is 
something  amiss  with  the  name — Jeiv. 
We  cannot  fail  to  realize  the  importance 
of  this  distinction,  for  it  gives  us  the  key 
to  the  riddle. 

We  thus  find  that  the  relation  of  the 
mental  attitude  of  Gentile  to  the  Jew  is 
equal  to  the  relation  of  prejudice  to  the 
name — Jew,  or, 

Mental  attitude  of  Gentile:  Jew:: 
Prejudice:  Name — Jew. 


MAN  AND  JEW. 


77 


Here  it  is  necessary  to  pause  and  re¬ 
flect.  We  have  reached  a  spot  with  many 
roads  leading  in  different  directions;  it 
is  necessary  therefore  to  guard  against 
taking  the  wrong  path.  Let  us  critically 
consider  the  situation. 

We  have  discovered  that  it  is  the 
name  Jew  which  is  that  cause  of  the 
prejudice.  Our  next  step  should  then 
be  to  consider  what  there  may  be  in  that 
name  Jew  which  produces  that  emotion. 


VII. 


The  Name  Jew. 

The  name  Jew  is  not  the  name  of  an 
individual,  but  of  a  certain  class  of  men. 
The  class  of  men  going  by  that  name 
number  in  the  millions  and  have  a  na¬ 
tional  record.  It  is  consequently  the 
name  of  a  distinct  people. 

Since  it  has  been  established  that  it 
is  not  the  individual  Jew  who  causes 
that  prejudice,  but  it  is  the  name  Jew, 
and  since  that  name  implies  the  whole 
Jewish  people,  reason  points  to  the 
whole  Jewish  people  as  the  cause  of  that 
emotion  of  prejudice. 

From  what  we  have  learned  before 
there  is  nothing  in  that  class  of  men,  the 
Jewish  people,  which  should  differenti¬ 
ate  them,  as  men,  from  the  Aryan.  It 
was  also  established  beyond  any  doubt 
that  the  Jews,  as  well  as  any  other  of 

78 


TIIE  NAME  JEW. 


79 


the  civilized  peoples,  are  modern  men. 
We  have  also  by  personal  experience 
seen  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  indi¬ 
vidual  Jew  which  could  cause  that  emo¬ 
tion  of  prejudice.  Hence  the  individual 
Jew  is  as  good  a  man  as  any  other, 
and  since  there  is  nothing  wrong 
about  the  individual  Jew  there  can  be 
nothing  wrong  about  the  Jewish  people 
which  is  composed  of  individual  Jews. 
But  we  have  it  that  it  is  the  name  of  the 
whole  Jewish  people  which  produces  the 
prejudice  not  only  within  the  psychology 
of  one  class  of  men,  but  of  all  classes; 
we  therefore  again  reach  the  conclusion 
that  there  must  be  something  the  matter 
with  the  whole  people  after  all,  and  we 
must  endeavor  to  discover  what  it  is. 


VIII. 


Jews,  Judaism,  Jewish  Religion  and 
Why  They  Survived. 

We  see  before  us  twelve  million  human 
beings  identified  as  Jews.  As  we  have 
observed,  they  have  an  historical  record 
of  a  distinct  people.  The  fact  is  that 
they  regard  themselves  as  such  and  are 
regarded  in  that  light  by  the  nations  of 
the  world. 

As  the  Jews  have  no  country  of  their 
own  and  are  dispersed  among  the  na¬ 
tions  without  losing  their  identity,  they 
are  therefore  a  distinct  international 
society. 

From  their  history  we  learn  that  about 
four  thousand  years  ago  their  ancestors 
sojourned  with  the  Egyptians  and  were 
held  there  in  the  house  of  bondage.  They 
were  eventually  freed  by  Moses,  an 

Israelite  who  was  brought  up  in  the 

80 


JEWS,  WHY  THEY  SURVIVED. 


81 


court  of  Pharaoh  as  a  prince.  Moses  led 
the  Israelites  from  Egypt  and  organized 
them  at  Mount  Sinai  as  a  distinct  so¬ 
ciety,  a  people,  for  the  sole  purpose  that 
they  should  keep  holy  and  observe  cer¬ 
tain  fundamental  ethical  laws  as  ex¬ 
pressed  in  the  Ten  Commandments, 
which  he  engraved  on  stone  as  a  lasting 
record.  Moses  also  had  given  the 
Israelites  by-laws  which  tended  to  keep 
them  together  as  a  people  and  particu¬ 
larly  to  enforce  the  observance  of  the 
said  fundamental  ethical  principles  en¬ 
graved  on  stone — the  Ten  Command¬ 
ments. 

After  Moses,  at  various  epochs  of  the 
J ewish  existence  as  a  people,  the  by-laws 
were  amended  and  modified  to  suit  the 
times,  but  they  always  served  as  a  school 
of  discipline  that  Israel  should  remem¬ 
ber  and  keep  holy  the  fundamental  law 
which  ever  remained  unchanged  and  as¬ 
sumed  greater  significance  and  truth  as 
time  passed  on. 


82 


JEWS,  WHY  THEY  SURVIVED. 


These  by-laws  were  in  their  character 
religious.  They  were  enforced  by  the 
elders  of  the  people  and  in  the  course 
of  time  assumed  the  form  of  a  perma¬ 
nent  religious  institution,  always  with 
the  end  in  view  to  discipline  the  children 
of  Israel  in  morality  according  to  the 
fundamental  principles  of  the  Ten  Com¬ 
mandments,  and  also  to  prevent  the 
fusion  of  the  Jews  with  the  other 
peoples  who,  at  that  time,  were  far  from 
perceiving  the  truths  of  Judaism. 

Organized  as  a  people  whose  life  was 
a  definite  law  of  highest  ethical  import, 
and  surrounded  by  the  various  rules  of 
discipline,  the  Jews,  notwithstanding  the 
environment  of  those  days,  continued 
their  corporate  existence  separate  and 
apart  from  the  other  peoples  and  up¬ 
held  the  spirit  of  the  highest  law,  which 
eventually  became  the  conception  of 
every  civilized  people. 

When  the  Jews  were  dispersed  among 
the  peoples  of  the  earth,  a  particularly 


JEWS,  WHY  THEY  SURVIVED. 


83 


strict  religious  discipline  was  introduced 
by  the  doctors  of  the  Talmud.  These 
learned  men  in  the  law  of  Judaism, 
realizing  that  the  Jews  were  not  on  their 
own  soil  and  came  in  close  contact  with 
the  other  peoples  who  were  far  from  the 
doctrines  of  Judaism,  and  dreading  the 
influence  of  the  new  environment,  enact¬ 
ed  numerous  technical  religious  by-laws 
which  were  to  be  observed  by  every  J ew- 
ish  man,  woman  and  child,  under  the 
penalty  of  disgrace  of  the  violator. 

The  rabbis  who  thus  strengthened 
Judaism  by  the  Jewish  religion  fol¬ 
lowed  the  Hebrew  maxim :  ‘ 4  Train  up  a 
child  in  the  way  he  should  go ;  and  when 
he  is  old  he  will  not  depart  from  it.” 
(Prov.  xxii.  6.)  This  rule  holds  good 
with  a  people  as  with  an  individual. 

The  discipline  of  the  Talmudists  exer¬ 
cises  its  influence  to  this  day  not  only 
on  the  orthodox  Jew,  but  on  the  re¬ 
formed  Jews  and  the  Jew-assimilators 
as  well.  Among  the  Jews  are  found 


84  JEWS,  WHY  THEY  SURVIVED. 

most  radical  men  who  are  far  from  re- 

✓ 

ligion,  yet  they  remain  loyal  Jews  not 
only  because  of  the  ethical  principles  of 
Judaism,  but  also  because  they  were 
trained  to  adhere  to  their  people  from 
which  they  cannot  separate  themselves 
even  if  they  believe  that  they  can.  How¬ 
ever,  the  training  itself  without  the  fun¬ 
damental  principles  of  Judaism  would 
not  be  able  to  exert  such  a  lasting 
influence. 

Judaism  and  the  Jewish  religion  were 
always  so  confounded  as  one  thing  that 
their  distinction  was  never  made  clear. 
But  it  is  evident  that  Judaism  is  one 
thing  and  the  Jewish  religion  is  another 
thing. 

Judaism  in  itself  is  no  more  than  a 
system  of  moral  laws  and  doctrines  as 
chiefly  represented  in  the  Scriptures,  the 
fundamental  laws  of  which  are  the  Ten 
Commandments. 

The  J ewish  religion,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  an  institution  which  consists  of 


JEWS,  WHY  THEY  SURVIVED.  85 

a  system  of  rites  and  ceremonies  to  be 
practiced  as  an  aid  to  remembering  and 
observing  the  fundamental  principles  of 
Judaism. 

The  fundamental  principles  of  Juda¬ 
ism  have  gradually  made  their  way 
among  the  peoples  and  have  become  the 
accepted  truths  of  universal  morality. 
The  principles  of  Judaism  are  regarded 
as  being  eternal. 

Now  it  is  clear  why  Judaism,  the 
Jewish  religion  and  the  Jews  survived. 
As  long  as  the  principles  of  a  society 
have  life  in  them  and  are  in  themselves 
a  living  institution,  the  society  itself  can¬ 
not  die.  Whether  consciously  or  uncon¬ 
sciously,  the  membership  of  the  society 
will  be  kept  alive  by  the  principles  for 
which  it  was  organized  as  long  as  the 
principles  themselves  have  not  lost  their 
vitality. 

It  is  also  clear,  therefore,  that  the 
Jewish  people  has  no  other  but  an  ethi¬ 
cal  and  spiritual  purpose  for  its  exist- 


8G  JEWS,  WHY  THEY  SURVIVED. 

ence ;  it  is  consequently  an  International 
Ethical  and  Spiritual  People,  and  not  an 
imperium  in  imperio. 

The  Jews  can  call  the  attention  of 
mankind  to  this  fact  and  referring  to 
their  history  and  life  as  a  people,  say: 
We  are  an  ethical  and  spiritual  people, 
international  in  character  for  the  past 
two  thousand  years.  We  are  not  and 
never  will  he  an  imperium  in  imperio 
as  long  as  we  are  among  the  nations. 
For  proof  of  that  consider  us  as  we  are. 
Spectemur  agendo,  and  judge  us  by  our 
martyrdom  as  the  Jewish  nation,  pecu¬ 
liar  only  in  that  we  have  organized  as  a 
people  for  the  purpose  of  promoting  the 
principles  of  the  highest  ethics  and  exist 
as  people  with  no  other  aims. 


IX. 

Some  of  the  Supposed  Causes. 

Although  we  have  shown  in  the  pre¬ 
ceding  chapters  that  neither  Judaism 
nor  the  Jewish  religion  is  the  cause  of 
the  prejudice  against  the  Jews,  we  will 
nevertheless  add  a  few  remarks  on  this 
theme. 

We  find  that  the  fundamental  ethical 
and  religious  principles  of  the  Jews  do 
not  clash  with  the  laws  of  any  civilized 
country ;  on  the  contrary,  they  are  in  full 
harmony  with  the  fundamental  laws  of 
morality  and  conduct  of  every  civilized 
people.  The  Ten  Commandments,  the 
fundamental  laws  of  Judaism,  are  ac¬ 
cepted  by  every  civilization  as  the  basis 
of  all  morality,  and  are  in  various  forms 
introduced  by  legislators  in  every  code. 

The  Bible,  which  narrates  the  history 
of  the  origin  of  the  Jewish  people  and 

87 


88  SOME  OF  THE  SUPPOSED  CAUSES. 

in  which  the  fundamental  laws  of  moral¬ 
ity  appear,  is  held  sacred  by  all,  and  with 
every  enlightened  nation  it  is  even  ac¬ 
cepted  as  the  sanctity  on  which  an  oath 
is  administered. 

We  thus  see  that  neither  Judaism  nor 
the  Jewish  religion  is  the  cause  of  the 
emotion  of  prejudice  against  the  Jews. 
If  there  is  anything  which  does  the  Jews 
honor,  it  is  certainly  their  moral  and 
ethical  code,  which  is  held  in  reverence 
by  all  the  world. 

The  supposition  then,  by  some,  that  it 
may  be  the  Kulturkampf — Judaism  or 
the  Jewish  religion  which  causes  the 
prejudice — must  be  eliminated. 

Is  that  prejudice  caused  by  the  exclu¬ 
siveness  or  appearance  of  the  Jews? 
(According  to  Bernard  Lazare.) 

This  supposition  will  have  to  be  aban¬ 
doned  as  well,  when  we  consider  that  the 
prejudice  is  equally  strong  against  the 
Jew  assimilator,  who  is  like  the  Gentile 
in  every  respect,  except  in  name. 


SOME  OF  THE  SUPPOSED  CAUSES.  89 


Is  that  prejudice  caused  by  the  his¬ 
torical  fiction  that  the  Jews  have  cruci¬ 
fied  Jesus? 

This  perhaps  may  be  the  case  with 
some  ignorant  folks  who  know  nothing 
of  mankind  and  its  history.  Even  with 
such  it  is  only  a  secondary  cause,  the 
prejudice  being  there  before  this  fiction 
reaches  their  ears.  But  how  about  the 
Gentiles  who  are  familiar  with  the  facts 
of  history;  who  possess  education,  and 
are  not  superstitious?  How  about  such 
men  who  know  that  it  was  the  Romans 
who  crucified  Jesus,  and  that  Jesus  and 
the  Apostles  were  Jews  themselves? 
Why  are  they  prejudiced  against  the 
Jews? 

According  to  Pinsker  and  Herzl,  the 
cause  of  the  prejudice  against  the  Jews 
lies  in  the  supposition  that  they  are 
aliens  and  have  no  country  of  their  own. 

Is  this  really  the  cause?  Is  it  in  this 
that  we  find  the  cause  for  the  old  odium 
in  longum  jacens  against  the  Jews? 


90  SOME  OF  THE  SUPPOSED  CAUSES. 


An  inquiry  in  that  direction  reveals 
the  fact  that  it  is  not  so. 

Beginning  with  an  individual,  we  find 
that  because  one  has  no  realty  of  his  own 
and  does  not  live  in  his  own  house,  there 
is  no  prejudice  against  him.  Going  over 
to  the  consideration  of  corporations,  we 
find  the  same  conditions.  No  one  is 
prejudiced  against  any  corporation, 
whether  it  be  a  congregation  or  some 
other  institution,  because  it  may  own  no 
real  estate,  or  not  have  its  own  buildings. 
Passing  to  international  societies,  we 
again  fail  to  discover  that  the  lack  of  a 
territory  should  be  a  cause  for  the 
emotion  of  prejudice.  Is  there  any  pre¬ 
judice  against  the  international  brother¬ 
hood  of  the  Freemasons,  even  though  it 
is  a  secret  society!  It  is  known  that 
Freemasonry  is  an  ethical  institution, 
numbering  thousands  of  members,  and 
that  it  has  no  territory  of  its  own,  yet 
there  is  no  prejudice  either  against  the 
society  itself  or  against  any  of  its  mem- 


SOME  OF  THE  SUPPOSED  CAUSES.  91 


bers.  On  the  contrary,  because  it  is  an 
ethical  and  spiritual  institution,  it  is 
considered  an  honor  to  be  a  member 
thereof. 

At  this  stage  we  may  also  mention  the 
Zionists,  who  form  a  distinct  inter¬ 
national  Jewish  party.  While  we  find 
prejudice  against  the  Jews  at  large, 
there  is  no  prejudice  against  the  Zionist 
party,  which  desires  the  establishment 
of  a  territorial  state  for  the  Jews,  but 
has  no  territory  of  its  own. 

As  regards  nations  with  territories 
we  find  that  with  them  the  possession  of 
territory  sometimes  causes  jealousy  of 
one  nation  toward  another,  which  leads 
to  enmity  and  war. 

The  Jews  being  the  only  people  which 
was  able  to  survive  as  a  people  though 
it  lost  its  territory,  established  a  pre¬ 
cedent  that  a  nation,  or  association  of 
men  with  an  ethical  and  spiritual  pur¬ 
pose  for  its  existence,  can  live  without  a 
territory.  Hence,  a  territory  is  not  the 


92  SOME  OF  THE  SUPPOSED  CAUSES. 

sine  qua  non  for  the  existence  of  an 
ethical  people. 

When  a  Gentile  says  to  the  Jew,  “Yon 
are  a  stranger  here,  ’  ’  it  is  because  of  his 
prejudice  against  him,  and  not  because 
the  latter  lacks  a  territory  as  a  member 
of  the  Jewish  people. 

Jews  think  of  a  territory  because  they 
suffer  from  the  prejudice  against  them. 
Otherwise  they  do  not  feel  the  need  of  a 
territory  for  the  purposes  of  Judaism. 

We  cannot  discover,  try  as  we  may, 
anything  which  should  convince  the 
mind  that  lack  of  a  territory  is  the 
cause  of  the  prejudice  against  the  Jew. 

As  to  economic  conditions  being  the 
primary  cause  for  the  prejudice  against 
the  Jews  (according  to  Lazar e  and 
Beaulieu),  we  also  fail  to  find  it  to  be  the 
real  cause,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the 
Jews,  as  a  whole,  suffer  from  economic 
conditions  as  much  as,  and  even  more 
than,  the  Gentiles.  They  suffer  more 
because  not  only  do  they  suffer  from 


SOME  OF  THE  SUPPOSED  CAUSES.  93 


economic  conditions,  bnt  because  they 
are  also  accused  of  being  the  cause  of 
the  conditions. 

Other  reasons  which  were  given  as 
possible  causes  for  antisemitism  have 
been  proven  groundless,  and  there  is 
nothing  in  them  of  importance  which 
should  call  for  a  special  analysis. 

We  shall  therefore  proceed  with  our 
search  for  the  real  cause. 


X. 


Of  Societies  and  Multitudes. 

We  shall  once  more  use  our  sense-per¬ 
ception  and  observe  the  Jewish  people 
as  a  whole. 

There  are  before  us  about  twelve  mil¬ 
lion  human  beings  going  by  the  name  of 
Jews.  We  have  learned  of  their  origin 
and  their  aims  as  a  people.  We  know 
that  for  the  past  twenty  centuries,  since 
they  lost  their  own  territory,  they  rep¬ 
resent  an  International  Ethical  and 
Spiritual  Society. 

We  are  also  aware  of  the  fact  that  no 
matter  whether  we  speak  of  the  biggest 
nation,  the  smallest  people  or  any  asso¬ 
ciation  of  men  for  some  definite  purpose, 
each  of  these  represents  a  distinct  so¬ 
ciety  or  association. 

Since  we  speak  of  the  twelve  million 
Jews  as  a  distinct  society  and  as  a  defi- 

94 


OF  SOCIETIES  AND  MULTITUDES.  95 


nite  association,  let  us  look  at  it  and 
see  it. 

Our  sense-perception  tells  us  that  we 
do  not  see  a  Jewish  society  or  a  Jewish 
association,  but  what  we  do  see  is  a  mul¬ 
titude  of  Jeivs. 

We  look  again  and  try  to  make  sure  of 
what  we  see;  the  picture  is  the  same  no 
matter  how  we  try  to  observe  it ;  before 
us  is  not  a  definite  society  of  Jews,  we 
see  a  l^ig  multitude  of  Jews. 

Now,  there  is  a  great  difference  be¬ 
tween  a  society,  an  association,  or  a  peo¬ 
ple,  or  whatever  it  may  be  called,  and  a 
multitude,  even  if  the  multitude  goes  by 
one  certain  name.  A  multitude  is  not  a 
society. 

A  distinct  society  or  association  has 
been  defined  as  a  body  of  persons  asso¬ 
ciated  for  a  common  object.  It  is  a  defi¬ 
nite  body  and  is  distinguished  by  the  ele¬ 
ments  of  unity  in  name,  object  and  its 
reference  to  assemblage  and  representa¬ 
tion. 


96  OF  SOCIETIES  AND  MULTITUDES. 

A  multitude,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a 
large  number  or  body  of  persons  indefi¬ 
nite ,  without  reference  to  assemblage 
or  representation.  Even  if  it  goes  by 
one  certain  name  and  has  a  common  ob¬ 
ject,  it  cannot  be  regarded  as  a  distinct, 
definite  society,  because  it  has  not  the 
element  of  unity  as  a  body. 

We  have  made  here  a  very  important 
discovery:  while  twelve  million  human 
beings  go  under  one  name,  “Jews,” 
they  are  nevertheless  not  a  definite 
society,  but  a  multitude.  While  they 
have  one  common  ethical  object,  hence 
a  spiritual  unity,  they  are  neverthe¬ 
less  still  a  multitude  lacking  the  ele¬ 
ment  of  assemblage  or  representation. 
The  twelve  million  Jews,  then,  do  not 
constitute  a  collective  unity.  As  they  do 
not  have  that  element  of  a  physical 
unity  which  a  society,  whether  small  or 
large,  must  have,  we  find  them  therefore 
incapable  of  deliberating,  resolving  and 
acting  in  that  personal  capacity  which 


OF  SOCIETIES  AND  MULTITUDES.  97 


every  definite  society  has.  Being  only  a 
multitude,  a  body  without  reference  to 
assemblage  and  representation,  they  are 
an  abnormal  association  without  a  will, 
hence  they  may  be  termed  a  mob  as  well. 

Having  observed  this  chaotic  state  of 
the  twelve  millions  of  human  beings  who 
persist  in  going  by  one  common  name, 
“Jews,”  we  ask:  Can  it  be  that  the  ab¬ 
normal  state  of  the  Jews  as  a  distinct 
multitude  calls  forth  the  emotion  of  pre¬ 
judice  within  the  Gentile? 

In  one  of  the  foregoing  chapters  we 
have  demonstrated  that  prejudice  is  an 
emotion,  a  vague  idea  based  on  some¬ 
thing  indefinite.  We  have  also  men¬ 
tioned  the  fact  that  as  far  as  the  Gentile 
is  concerned,  we  have  to  search  the  work¬ 
ings  of  his  mind  in  order  to  discover  the 
cause  of  that  emotion  of  prejudice 
against  the  name  Jew. 

The  question  before  us  now  is  whether 
the  abnormality  of  the  Jews  in  being  a 


98  OF  SOCIETIES  AND  MULTITUDES. 

mere  multitude  is  the  cause  of  that  emo¬ 
tion  of  prejudice. 

We  have  therefore  to  institute  an  in¬ 
quiry  into  the  workings  of  the  mind  of 
man  and  discover  how  it  thinks  and 
forms  ideas  when  confronted  with  bodies 
which  have  a  plurality  of  elements. 

Here  we  will  bring  to  the  attention 
of  mankind  a  fact,  which  though  well 
known  to  the  philosopher  was  never 
appreciated  in  its  significant  relation  to 
human  society  and  particularly  to  the 
Jewish  Question,  and  which  we  yet  be¬ 
lieve  to  be  the  missing  link,  so  to  say, 
in  the  Jewish  problem  so  long  sought 
after. 


XI. 


Collective  Bodies  and  the  Law  of  the 

Mind. 

Treating  on  the  relation  of  collective 
bodies  to  the  law  of  the  mind,  which  can 
be  rightly  termed  jus  divinum,  there  are 
many  authorities.  Immanuel  Kant  in 
his  work,  “Critique  of  Pure  Reason,” 
treats  on  it  particularly  in  the  chapter 
on  “Deduction  of  the  Pure  Conception 
of  the  Under  standing,”  wherein  we  find 
the  explanation  for  the  possibility  of 
a  conjunction  of  the  manifold  repre¬ 
sentations  given  by  sense;  of  the  orig¬ 
inally  synthetical  unity  of  apperception ; 
of  the  principle  of  the  synthetical  unity 
of  apperception  as  the  highest  principle 
of  all  exercise  of  understanding,  etc. 
Among  the  other  philosophers  who  deal 
with  the  subject  and  whose  works  should 
he  consulted  are  Spencer,  Cousin,  Locke 
and  Hume. 


99 


100 


LAW  OF  THE  MIND. 


For  the  purposes  of  this  work  and  in 
order  to  avoid  lengthy  quotations,  we 
will  make  use  of  some  views  of  Profes¬ 
sor  Borden  P.  Bowne,  who,  in  his  book, 
“Theory  of  Thought  and  Knowledge,” 
lays  down  in  as  simple  a  manner  as  the 
subject  permits  the  following  conditions 
of  thought  with  respect  to  collective 
bodies.  He  says : 

‘  ‘  There  are  multitudinous  condi¬ 
tions  of  concrete  thought  of  an  acci¬ 
dental  sort,  both  physiological  and 
psychological;  and  there  are  certain 
other  conditions  given  in  the  very 
structure  of  thought  itself.  Only  the 
latter  concern  us  here. 

“And  as  consciousness  is  the  abso¬ 
lute  condition  of  all  thought,  it  seems 
as  if  a  discussion  of  consciousness 
were  a  necessary  preliminary  to  the 
theory  of  thought.  This  seeming, 
however,  is  misleading.  Since  con¬ 
sciousness  is  an  accompaniment  of  all 


LAW  OF  THE  MIND.  101 

/ 

mental  states,  it  is  easy  to  think  that 
it  is  a  distinct  element  by  itself.  This 
is  a  logical  illusion.  The  spatial  fig¬ 
ures  also  in  which  we  speak  of  con¬ 
sciousness  lead  to  the  fancy  that  con¬ 
sciousness  is  something  which  con¬ 
tains  other  mental  states,  or  which 
furnishes  the  stage  for  their  opera¬ 
tions.  But,  in  fact,  consciousness  is 
no  simple,  homogeneous  mental  state 
antecedent  to  objects,  or  apart  from 
objects;  it  arises  only  in  connection 
with  particular  objects,  and  is  nothing 
by  itself.  When  consciousness  is 
empty  of  objects  there  is  nothing  left. 

“Consciousness  may,  indeed,  exist 
in  varying  grades  of  clearness,  from  a 
vague  sense  of  subjectivity  and  objec¬ 
tivity  up  to  the  distinct  consciousness 
of  self  and  the  definite  apprehension  of 
an  object ;  but  in  every  case  the  vague¬ 
ness  of  the  consciousness  is  the  vague¬ 
ness  of  the  apprehension;  and  an  at¬ 
tempt  to  make  the  consciousness  more 


102 


LAW  OF  THE  MIND. 


distinct  could  only  direct  itself  to 
making  the  conception  more  distinct. 
If  there  be  a  vague,  undifferentiated, 
unrecognized  somehowness  of  feeling 
which  we  choose  to  call  consciousness, 
it  is  plainly  nothing  for  intelligence  so 
long  as  it  remains  in  this  state.  In 
order  to  attain  to  rationality  this 
general  consciousness,  which  is  a  con¬ 
sciousness  of  nothing,  must  in  some 
way  become  a  consciousness  of  some¬ 
thing.  Hence  the  question,  How  we 
come  to  rational  and  articulate  con¬ 
sciousness,  is  identical  with  the  ques¬ 
tion,  How  we  get  objects  of  thought 
and  knowledge. 

“Thought,  as  apprehending  truth, 
exists  only  in  the  form  of  the  judg¬ 
ment.  The  presence  of  ideas  in  con¬ 
sciousness,  or  their  passage  through 
it,  is  neither  truth  nor  error,  but  only 
a  mental  event.  Truth  or  error 
emerges  only  when  we  reach  the  judg¬ 
ment.  The  fundamental  conditions  of 


LAW  OF  THE  MIND. 


103 


the  judgment,  therefore,  must  be  fun¬ 
damental  conditions  of  thought  itself. 
These  are  three:  the  unity  and  iden¬ 
tity  of  the  thinking  self,  the  law  of 
identity  and  contradiction,  and  the 
fact  of  connection  among  the  objects 
of  thought.  The  first  is  the  condition 
of  any  rational  consciousness  what¬ 
ever.  The  second  is  the  condition  of 
our  thoughts  having  any  constant  and 
consistent  meaning.  The  third  refers 
to  that  objective  connection  which 
thought  aims  to  reproduce,  and  with¬ 
out  which  thought  loses  all  reference 
to  truth.  As  the  first  relates  to  the 
constitution  of  the  subject,  it  might  be 
called  the  subjective  condition;  the 
second  might  be  called  the  formal 
condition;  and  the  third,  as  relating 
to  the  constitution  of  the  object,  might 
be  called  the  objective  condition.  Or, 
without  too  great  inaccuracy,  they 
might  be  called,  respectively,  the 
psychological,  the  logical  and  the  on- 


104 


LAW  OF  THE  MIND. 


tological  condition  of  thought.  The 
name,  however,  is  of  no  moment,  pro¬ 
vided  we  understand  the  thing. 

‘ ‘We  consider  first  the  unity  of  the 
mental  subject  as  the  condition  of 
thought. 

“Let  us  take  the  judgment  A  is  B, 
where  A  and  B  are  any  two  particular 
states  of  consciousness.  How  is  this 
judgment  possible? 

“The  answer  is,  It  is  possible  only 
as  there  is  a  conscious  subject  M, 
which  is  neither  A  nor  B,  but  em¬ 
braces  both  in  the  unity  of  its  own 
consciousness.  Then,  by  distinguish¬ 
ing,  comparing  and  uniting  them  in 
the  unity  of  one  conscious  act,  it 
reaches  the  judgment  A  is  B.  But  so 
long  as  we  have  only  the  particular 
states  A  and  B,  they  remain  external 
to  each  other,  and  the  judgment  is 
non-existent  and  impossible. 

“A  demurrer  is  sometimes  raised 
against  this  conclusion.  That  the  ex- 


LAW  OF  THE  MIND. 


105 


ternal  juxtaposition  of  particular 
thoughts  can  never  become  a  thought 
of  the  particulars  in  their  mutual  re¬ 
lations  is  manifest.  A.  conception  of 
all  the  parts  of  a  watch  in  separation 
is  not  a  conception  of  the  watch.  The 
conception  of  the  watch  is  not  a  con¬ 
geries  of  component  conceptions,  but 
it  is  rather  a  single,  unitary  concep¬ 
tion.  In  like  manner,  it  is  urged,  the 
judgment  is  also  one.  It  is  not  built 
out  of  particular  states,  and  needs 
nothing  beyond  the  one  judging  act 
itself. 

‘ 4  This  claim  is  subtle  rather  than 
profound.  There  is  a  clear  conception 
of  the  impossibility  of  building  com¬ 
plex  conceptions  out  of  simple  ones  by 
mere  juxtaposition,  but  along  with 
this  there  is  a  confusion  of  logical  sim¬ 
plicity  with  psychological  simplicity. 
Psychologically,  no  doubt,  the  concep¬ 
tion  of  plurality  is  as  truly  a  single 
act  as  the  conception  of  unity.  The 


106 


LAW  OF  THE  MIND. 


conception  of  a  watch  is  as  truly  one 
as  the  conception  of  a  single  wheel. 
But  logically  the  one  conception  has  a 
plurality  of  elements;  and  there  can 
be  no  true  thought  until  the  unity  of 
the  conception  is  distinguished  into 
the  plurality  of  its  implications.  Over 
against  the  plurality  we  must  affirm  a 
unity;  and,  equally,  over  against  the 
unity  we  must  affirm  a  plurality. 
Analysis  is  as  necessary  as  synthesis. 
The  judgment,  then,  may  be  psycho¬ 
logically  one,  but  logically  it  involves 
the  distinction  of  A  and  B  as  well  as 
their  union.  Without  this  distinction 
the  judgment  is  impossible.  And  for 
this  logical  distinction  and  union  alike 
we  need  something  which  is  neither  A 
nor  B,  but  which  comprehends  and 
acts  upon  both.  This  something  we 
call  the  self.  By  it  we  mean  not  any¬ 
thing  sensuously  or  imaginatively  pre¬ 
sentable,  but  only  that  unitary  and 
abiding  principle  revealed  in  thought, 


LAW  OF  THE  MIND. 


107 


and  without  which  thought  is  im¬ 
possible.” 

From  the  foregoing  we  learn  and  must 
now  constantly  bear  in  mind  in  the 
course  of  our  further  inquiry,  that  there 
cannot  be  a  true  thought  until  the  unity 
of  the  conception  of  a  certain  object  is 
distinguished  into  the  plurality  of  its  im¬ 
plications;  that  over  against  the  plural¬ 
ity  the  mind  must  affirm  a  unity;  and 
equally  over  against  the  unity  the  mind 
must  affirm  plurality ;  that  the  judgment 
is  psychologically  one,  but  logically  it 
involves  the  distinction  of  the  various 
parts  of  the  object  as  well  as  their  rela¬ 
tion  and  union;  that  without  this  dis¬ 
tinction  judgment  is  impossible.  For 
this  logical  distinction  and  union  alike 
the  mind  needs  something  which  is  not 
one  or  the  other  part  of  the  object,  but 
the  object  itself  which  comprehends  and 
acts  upon  all  the  parts.  This  something 
is  the  self,  the  object  itself.  By  it  is 


108 


LAW  OF  THE  MIND. 


meant  not  anything  sensuously  or  imag¬ 
inatively  presentable,  but  only  that  ordi¬ 
nary  and  abiding  principle  revealed  in 
thought,  without  which  thought  is  impos¬ 
sible. 

We  shall  now  illustrate  in  more  detail 
the  mentioned  law  of  the  mind: 

We  take  the  same  object,  a  watch,  as 
an  example.  The  watch  itself  is  a  defi¬ 
nite  unit  and  the  mind  perceives  it  as  a 
unit.  Yet  the  watch  is  composed  of  many 
wheels  and  parts.  The  wheels  and  parts 
are  not  the  watch  itself,  but  together 
they  make  up  and  form  one  thing — the 
watch.  We  observe  then  that  the  watch 
is  psychologically  one,  but  logically  it 
involves  the  distinction  between  the 
wheels  and  parts  and  their  relation  and 
union.  Without  this  distinction  judg¬ 
ment  would  be  impossible,  and  for  this 
logical  distinction  and  union  of  the 
wheels  and  the  parts  the  mind  needs 
something  which  is  neither  a  wheel  nor 
wheels,  part  or  parts,  but  something 


LAW  OF  THE  MIND. 


109 


which  comprehends  and  acts  upon  all  the 
wheels  and  parts.  This  something  we 
call  watch,  which  is  the  self  of  all 
the  wheels  and  parts.  In  the  watch 
there  is  nothing  sensuously  or  imagina¬ 
tively  presentable,  but  there  is  only  that 
unitary  and  abiding  principle  revealed  in 
thought,  without  which  a  true  thought  of 
that  self — watch,  would  be  impossible. 

What  is  true  of  the  mind  in  its  thought 
of  a  watch  is  true  in  its  thought  of 
everything  else. 

When  we  say  a  man,  the  mind  has  the 
conception  of  a  unit,  notwithstanding  the 
fact  that  a  man  is  a  body  composed  of 
numerous  organs  and  cells.  Yet  over 
against  the  plurality  of  the  organs  and 
cells  the  mind  psychologically  affirms  the 
unity — man,  and  over  against  the  unity 
— man,  the  mind  logically  affirms  the 
plurality  of  the  organs  and  cells.  The 
self  called  man  is  the  unitary  and  abid¬ 
ing  principle  revealed  in  thought. 

Of  the  same  kind  is  the  conception 


110 


LAW  OF  THE  MIND. 


the  mind  has  of  corporations,  whether 
they  are  small  or  big,  local  or  interna¬ 
tional. 

When  we  take  as  an  example  the 
American  People,  we  find  that  as  a  whole 
it  is  a  unity.  This  unity  is  composed  of 
millions  of  individuals  who  are  also  di¬ 
vided  in  many  parties.  Yet  the  mind 
psychologically  perceives  over  against 
the  plurality  of  individuals  and  parties, 
the  unity — the  one  American  People ; 
and  logically  over  against  the  unity  it 
affirms  the  plurality  of  individuals  and 
parties. 

Our  thought  then  with  a  people  is  also 
psychologically  one,  but  logically  it  in¬ 
volves  the  distinction  of  the  millions  of 
citizens  and  residents,  the  parties  as  well 
as  their  relation  to  one  another  and  their 
union.  For  this  logical  distinction  and 
union  of  a  nation,  the  mind  also  needs 
that  something  which  is  neither  one  citi¬ 
zen  nor  another,  neither  one  party  nor 
the  other,  but  which  comprehends  and 


LAW  OF  THE  MIND. 


Ill 


acts  upon  all  the  individuals  and  all  the 
parties.  The  mind  needs  something  which 
is  the  self ,  and  this  self  it  calls  the 
people ,  the  nation. 

Of  the  American  people,  however,  the 
mind  can  have  a  true  thought  because  it 
is  a  normal  society  with  the  element  of 
assemblage  and  representation.  Assem¬ 
blage  and  representation  is  the  only 
element  (not  territory)  which  takes  a 
body  of  men  out  of  the  category  of  a 
multitude  and  gives  it  the  form  of 
unity  which  makes  it  conformable  to  the 
normal  state  of  a  corporation,  and  which 
complies  with  that  then  ordinary  and 
abiding  principle  revealed  in  thought, 
without  which  thought  is  impossible. 

This  principle  consequently  applies  to 
every  corporation,  be  it  congregation, 
association  or  nation. 

We  will  now  turn  our  attention  to  the 
Jews  and  try  to  discover  what  concep¬ 
tion  the  mind  has  concerning  them. 


112 


LAW  OF  THE  MIND. 


We  discover  that  the  mind  can  form 
no  true  conception  of  what  the  Jews  are. 
It  cannot  over  against  the  plurality  af¬ 
firm  a  unity,  nor  can  it  over  against  the 
unity  affirm  a  plurality.  The  judgment 
here  can  he  neither  psychological  nor 
logical.  The  reason  for  this  is  that  in 
order  to  enable  the  mind  to  think  rightly 
of  the  collective  body,  the  body  must  be 
a  normal  one.  The  collective  object  must 
have  the  self  which  is  not  any  of  the 
parts  of  which  it  is  composed,  it  must  be 
something  which  embraces  and  acts  upon 
all  the  parts,  thus  making  up  the  self. 
The  Jews  have  it  not.  All  the  mind 
knows  is  that  there  are  J ews,  but  it  does 
not  see  the  self,  the  Jewish  physical 
unity,  the  Jewish  people,  which  should 
be  expressed  by  assemblage  and  repre¬ 
sentation,  which  should  comprehend  and 
act  upon  all  the  J  ews.  Having  before  it 
only  J  ews,  the  parts  of  the  self,  the  mind 
has  no  true  thought,  and  is  therefore 
confused  as  to  what  the  Jews  are. 


LAW  OF  THE  MIND. 


113 


Having  before  itself  only  a  multitude 
of  Jews,  the  mind  cannot  psychologically 
or  logically  differentiate  the  parts  from 
the  whole,  and  the  whole  from  the  parts, 
and  for  this  reason  sees  in  every  Jew 
and  all  the  Jews  something  which  it  does 
not  understand.  The  mind  sees  Jews 
but  does  not  see  the  self  of  the  Jews,  the 
Jewish  people.  In  this  we  find  the  rea¬ 
son  why  when  the  other  peoples  talk 
about  Jews  they  refer  to  them  as  Jews, 
but  never  as  the  Jewish  people. 

Because  the  mind  can  form  no  true 
thought  of  the  Jews,  it  is  confused, 
without,  however,  realizing  this  fact, 
and  therefore  prejudice  naturally 
arises.  It  is  now  clear  why  prejudice 
against  the  Jew  has  so  long  remained 
unexplained  and  why  the  prejudiced 
mind,  seeing  only  a  multitude,  piled  up 
every  act  and  phenomenon  of  individual 
Jews  on  the  whole  multitude. 

We  thus  also  now  understand  why 
every  crime  or  objectionable  act  com- 


114 


LAW  OF  THE  MIND. 


mitted  by  an  individual  Jew  is  charged 
to  all  the  Jews. 

The  prejudiced  mind  will  always  pick 
out  what  is  objectionable  in  the  object  it 
is  prejudiced  against. 

We  have  thus  found  the  answer  to  the 
Jewish  question.  We  have  thus  discov¬ 
ered  the  primary  cause  of  the  prejudice 
against  the  Jew. 

The  prejudice  is  due  to  the  abnormal¬ 
ity  of  the  collective  unity  of  the  Jewish 
people,  of  which  the  mind  cannot  form  a 
definite  conception.  We  therefore  obtain 
that  the  relation  of  the  attitude  of  the 
mind  of  Gentile  to  Jew  is  equal  to  the 
relation  of  the  prejudice  to  the  abnor¬ 
mality  of  the  Jewish  collective  unity,  or 

Attitude  of  the  mind  of  Gentile : 
Jew::  Prejudice:  Abnormality  of  the 
Jewish  collective  unity. 

In  the  foregoing  answer  we  find  the 
nervus  probandi  of  the  solution  of  the 
Jewish  riddle. 


XII. 


Further  Proof. 

We  have  observed  the  law  of  the  mind 
in  its  relation  to  collective  bodies.  We 
know  that  consciousness  is  no  simple, 
homogeneous  mental  state,  antecedent  to 
objects,  or  apart  from  objects,  but  that  it 
arises  only  in  connection  with  particular 
objects,  and  is  nothing  by  itself.  When 
consciousness  is  empty  of  objects  there 
is  nothing  left. 

We  have  also  learned  that  thought,  as 
apprehending  truth,  exists  only  in  the 
form  of  the  judgment.  The  presence  of 
ideas  in  consciousness,  or  their  passage 
through  it,  is  neither  truth  nor  error, 
but  only  a  mental  event. 

We  have  also  made  clear  to  ourselves 
under  what  circumstances  the  judgment 
can  be  true  and  under  what  circum- 


115 


116 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


stances  it  is  impossible  for  the  mind  to 
form  true  thought. 

We  shall,  therefore,  now  continue  our 
inquiry  as  to  that  law  which  reigns  in  the 
mind-world,  and  look  for  further  proof 
as  to  whether  the  mind  is  actually  uni¬ 
form  in  its  ways  when  dealing  with  nor¬ 
mal  or  abnormal  bodies  of  a  collective 
nature. 

We  are  fully  aware  of  the  fact  that 
every  people  and  every  association  of 
men  has,  by  reason  of  its  manifold  mem¬ 
bership,  individuals  of  divers  characters, 
means  and  culture.  There  are  rich  and 
poor,  ignorant  and  learned,  honest  and 
dishonest.  Yet  at  no  time  will  we  charge 
the  whole  society  or  people  with  pau¬ 
perism  because  it  has  some  poor  mem¬ 
bers;  with  wealth,  because  there  are  in 
it  some  capitalists;  with  criminal  ten¬ 
dencies,  because  some  of  its  members  are 
criminals.  It  is  impossible  for  the  mind 
to  form  such  conceptions  because,  as  we 
have  seen,  it  operates  psychologically 

4 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


117 


and  logically.  It  can  therefore  differen¬ 
tiate  between  the  unity  as  such  and  its 
parts  as  such  and  vice  versa. 

This,  however,  is  the  case  only  with  a 
normal  society  or  people.  When  asked 
for  a  definition  of  what  constitutes  an 
American,  or  Frenchman,  we  will  easily 
define  them  and  say  that  they  are  mem¬ 
bers  or  citizens  of  this  or  that  people, 
etc.,  without  regard  to  their  individual 
characteristics. 

When  the  question  is  put,  What  con¬ 
stitutes  a  Jew?  the  mind  somehow  is  per¬ 
plexed  and  is  unable  to  define  or  explain 
what  really  the  Jew  is.  The  reason  for 
this  is  now  obvious.  The  Jews  as  a  x>eo- 
ple,  lacking  the  element  of  physical  unity 
because  not  having  the  element  of  as¬ 
semblage  and  representation,  constitute 
an  abnormal  collective  body,  a  fact  which 
makes  it  impossible  for  the  mind  to  be 
psychological  and  logical.  There  are 
Jews,  but  there  is  not  the  self  of  all  Jews 
— the  Jewish  people. 


118 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


“Try  as  hard  as  I  may,”  says 
George  H.  Warner  in  his  book,  “The 
Jewish  Spectre,”  “I  cannot  find  terms 
brief  and  at  the  same  time  compre¬ 
hensive  enough  to  put  this  spectre 
(meaning  the  Jews)  of  the  popular 
fancy  before  my  readers.” 

Being  unable  to  explain  briefly  what 
the  Jew  is,  Mr.  Warner  tried  to  explain 
prolixly,  and  accordingly  gave  his  read¬ 
ers  three  hundred  and  seventy  pages  of 
explanations  of  what  the  J ew  is.  Finally 
he  succeeded  in  arriving  at  the  very 
definite  conclusion  that  the  Jew  is  a 
spectre ,  and  by  this  term  he  believes  he 
settled  the  question. 

We  do  not  blame  Mr.  Warner  or  any¬ 
body  else  for  the  confusion  and  incon¬ 
sistency  shown  in  arriving  at  such  con¬ 
clusions  regarding  the  Jew.  They  only 
prove  beyond  doubt  that  the  mind  under 
its  laws  cannot  comprehend  and  form  a 
true  thought  about  a  society  of  men  in 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


119 


an  abnormal  state — without  representa¬ 
tives. 

As  an  excellent  illustration  to  what 
extent  the  mind  is  confused  when  think¬ 
ing  about  the  Jews,  we  quote  Mr. 
Bernard  Richards,  who,  in  his  “Dis¬ 
courses  of  Keidansky,”  in  the  chapter 
on  “What  Constitutes  a  Jew?”  earn¬ 
estly,  but  in  his  spicy,  humorous  way, 
inquires : 

“And  after  we  have  read  about  him 
in  the  comic  weeklies,  have  seen  him 
delineated  in  popular  works  of  fiction, 
have  observed  him  caricatured  in  va¬ 
rious  publications,  have  beheld  him 
portrayed  on  the  vaudeville  stage  and 
have  heard  from  the  slum  student  of 
the  Ghetto;  after  we  have  visited  a 
few  money-lenders  —  on  important 
business — have  heard  our  minister 
talk  patronizingly  of  him,  telling  pity¬ 
ingly  of  how  he  hath  a  great  past  and 
possessed  more  than  a  few  commenda- 


120 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


ble  qualities,  and  of  how  he  was, 
alas !  doomed  to  damnation  because  he 
would  not  accept  the  religion  that  he 
hath  given  to  the  world ;  after  we  have 
bought  clothing  in  one  of  his  stores, 
taken  a  personal  peep  at  the  Ghetto, 
met  a  reformed  rabbi,  conversed  with 
a  distant  descendant  of  his  people, 
read  the  polite  charges  of  his  friend, 
the  anti-Semite,  and  gone  down  and 
made  beautiful  speeches  before  him 
prior  to  the  election;  I  say  even  after 
we  have  done  these  things,  or  some  of 
these  things  have  happened  to  us,  we 
must  still  ask  the  question :  What 
constitutes  the  Jew? 

“For  a  verity,  he  is  so  complex  in 
his  character,  so  heterogeneous  in  his 
general  composition,  so  diverse  in  his 
activities,  so  many  sided  in  his  worldly 
appearance,  so  wonderfully  ubiqui¬ 
tous,  and  withal  such  a  living  contra¬ 
diction,  that  even  after  we  have  made 
the  above  painful  efforts  to  under- 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


121 


stand  him,  we  are  still  at  a  loss  to 
know — what  we  know  about  him. 

“He  represents  one  of  the  ancient 
races  and  yet  is  as  up  to  date  as  any ; 
he  reaches  deepest  into  the  past  and 
looks  farthest  into  the  future;  he  is 
the  narrowest  conservative  and  the 
most  advanced  radical ;  in  religion  he 
is  the  most  dogmatic,  sectarian,  sta¬ 
tionary,  orthodox,  and  also  the  most 
liberal  and  universal  reformer;  he  is 
a  member  of  the  feeblest  and  strongest 
people  on  earth ;  he  has  no  land  of  his 
own  and  he  owns  many  lands;  his 
wealth  is  the  talk  and  the  envy  of  the 
world,  and  none  is  so  poor  as  he;  his 
riches  have  ever  been  magnified  and 
exaggerated,  his  dire  poverty  ever 
overlooked.  ‘As  poor  as  a  Jew’  would 
he  a  truer  simile  than  the  one  now  in 
use.  He  is  the  infamous  Shylock,  the 
money-lender,  yet  he  borrows  as  much 
and  more  money  than  he  lends  to 


122 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


others,  only  he  pays  his  debts  and  so 
there  is  no  talk  about  it;  Christians 
and  others  who  borrow  from  him  go 
to  Court,  denounce  him,  call  him  Shy- 
lock,  and  give  him  several  pounds  of 
‘  tongue  *  though  he  asks  not  for  flesh, 
because  it  is  not  ‘  kosher  ’  and  because 
whatever  he  is  he  never  is  cruel. 
Come  to  think  of  it,  what  a  fine  thing 
the  Sliylock  story  has  ever  been  for 
those  who  did  not  want  to  pay  their 
debts ! 

“He  loans  money  to  kings,  and  the 
kings  oppress  the  Jews ;  he  is  the  great 
concentrator  of  wealth,  and  he  is  the 
Socialist  and  Anarchist  working  ar¬ 
dently  for  the  abolition  of  the  private 
ownership  of  wealth;  he  is  eminently 
practical,  and  is  ever  among  the  world- 
f orgetting  dreamers,  ‘  the  great  host  of 
impracticables’;  he  has  no  fine  arts  of 
his  own,  and  he  carries  off  the  highest 
prizes  for  his  glorious  contribution  to 
the  arts  of  the  nations.  Now  he  is  ex- 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


123 


clusively  confined  to  liis  own  Hebrew 
religions  lore,  believing  that  beyond  it 
there  are  no  heights  to  scale,  no  depths 
to  fathom,  and  then  he  becomes  a 
Georg  Brandes,  a  great  interpreter  of 
the  literature  of  the  world;  his  own 
literature  is  so  Puritanical,  so  reli¬ 
gious  and  chaste  that  there  is  hardly 
a  single  love-song  to  be  found  therein, 
and  then  comes  a  Heinrich  Heine.  He 
is  a  slave  of  traditions  and  the  first  to 
break  them ;  persecute  him  and  he  will 
die  for  the  religion  of  his  fathers ;  give 
him  freedom  and  he  will  pity  them  for 
their  crude  conceptions  and  applaud 
Ingersoll ;  he  is  intensely  religious  and 
the  rankest  infidel;  he  condemns  the 
theatre  as  being  immoral,  and  he  is 
the  first  to  hail  Ibsen  and  applaud  him, 
even  on  the  Yiddish  stage ;  there  is  no 
one  so  clannish  and  so  cosmopolitan  as 
he  is,  and  whose  contrasts  can  be  mul¬ 
tiplied  to  the  abuse  of  time  and  space. 

“If,  then,  he  is  everything  and  to  be 


124 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


found  anywhere,  to  be  seen  in  all  sorts 
of  circumstances,  in  all  walks  of  life 
and  walking  in  so  many  diverse  ways 
making  his  way  in  such  strongly  con¬ 
trasted  conditions,  how  shall  we  know 
him!  How  shall  we  know  what  con¬ 
stitutes  a  Jew?” 

Here  we  observe  the  extraordinary 
spectacle  of  a  Jew  (and  a  good  Jew  at 
that)  trying  in  vain  to  define  what  a 
Jew  is  and  giving  it  up  as  a  hopeless 
riddle. 

If  the  Jew  himself  is  at  a  loss  to 
explain  what  he  is,  how  can  it  be  ex¬ 
pected  of  others  to  define  him? 

The  Jew  seems  to  be  everything  and 
nothing.  Why  such  inconsistency  and 
confusion  of  thought? 

Do  not  the  same  phenomena  enum¬ 
erated  by  Mr.  Richards  concerning  the 
Jew  exist  in  every  big  society  and 
especially  in  every  nation?  Cannot  the 
mind  with  equal  truth  say  about  the 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


125 


American  or  Englishman  almost  all  the 
things  that  Mr.  Richards  says  about  the 
Jew,  and  yet  be  logical  and  consistent! 

In  a  great  measure,  the  American 
people  is  much  more  complex  than  the 
Jews,  for  in  the  American  people  we 
find  blended  all  nationalities  and  we  find 
in  it  the  most  extraordinary  variety  of 
men,  yet  the  mind  in  thinking  of  the 
American  is  psychologically  and  logi¬ 
cally  consistent;  it  is  not  confused  and 
offers  true  thought. 

Can  we  imagine  Mr.  Richards  or  any 
other  writer  in  discussing  the  question 
what  constitutes  an  American,  end  in 
this  perplexing  manner:  If  then  he  (the 
American)  is  everything  and  to  be  found 
everywhere  (Americans  are  also  to  be 
found  in  many  countries),  to  be  seen  in 
all  circumstances  (there  being  rich  and 
poor  Americans),  in  all  walks  of  life  and 
walking  in  so  many  diverse  ways 
(among  the  Americans  there  are  also 
dealers,  bankers,  students,  artists,  mam 


126 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


ufacturers,  scientists,  laborers,  religious 
men  and  atheists,  etc.,  etc.),  in  such 
strongly  contrasted  conditions,  how  shall 
we  know  him  ?  How  shall  we  know  what 
constitutes  an  American? 

Such  a  statement,  as  we  see,  is  abso¬ 
lutely  impossible  for  the  mind  to  utter 
concerning  any  normal  big  society  or 
people.  The  name  American,  or  what¬ 
ever  name  of  a  society  it  may  be  when 
applied  to  an  individual  or  individuals, 
only  designates  what  society  or  people 
he,  she  or  they  are  members  of,  and  noth¬ 
ing  else.  The  private  pursuits  of  indi¬ 
viduals  of  a  society  or  people  have  noth¬ 
ing  to  do  with  the  society  or  people, 
when  the  question  is  for  the  meaning  of 
the  name  of  the  society  or  nation  in  its 
relation  to  the  individual. 

W e  could  thus  quote  many  other 
authors  who  have  made  similar  attempts 
at  finding  what  constitutes  a  Jew.  The 
reader  is  particularly  referred  to 
Messrs.  Zangwill’s  and  Nordau’s  ad- 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


127 


dresses  on  the  Jewish  Question  and  par¬ 
ticularly  to  the  latter’s  drama,  “A 
Question  of  Honor,”  wherein  he  treats 
on  the  problem.  But,  like  Mr.  Richards, 
they  failed  in  the  attempt  to  explain 
what  constitutes  a  Jew. 

The  foregoing  discourse  of  Keidansky 
is  the  best  proof  that  the  present  state 
of  the  Jews  makes  it  impossible  for  the 
mind  to  form  a  true  conception  of  what 
they  are  as  a  whole  and  what  they  are  as 
part  of  the  whole.  Their  abnormal  exist¬ 
ence  lasting  nearly  two  thousand  years, 
we  observe  that  the  question  is  as  old  as 
the  abnormality  of  the  Jewish  collective 
body. 

During  the  sojourn  of  the  Israelites 
with  the  Egyptians,  before  they  were 
freed  by  Moses  from  their  servitude, 
they  were  also  a  distinct  multitude  con¬ 
sisting  of  shepherd  tribes  without  assem¬ 
blage  and  representation.  At  that  time 
their  abnormality  as  a  collective  body 
worked  on  the  mind  of  man  in  the  same 


128 


FURTHER  FROOF. 


manner  as  it  did  a  thousand  years  later 
when  they  were  dispersed  among  the 
nations,  and  as  it  acts  since  their  dis¬ 
persion.  When  the  Egyptians  said,  “Be¬ 
hold,  the  people  of  Israel  are  more  nu¬ 
merous  and  mightier  than  we ;  come  on, 
let  us  deal  wisely  with  them,  lest  they 
multiply,’ ’  there  was  the  same  cause  for 
the  prejudice  as  when  Haman  said  to  the 
king,  “There  is  a  certain  people  scat¬ 
tered  abroad  and  dispersed  among  the 
peoples  in  all  the  provinces  of  thy  king¬ 
dom,  etc.”  There  is  the  same  cause  for 
the  prejudice  this  day. 

The  human  mind  seeks  to  understand 
every  phenomenon,  but  fears  riddles  and 
condemns  what  it  does  not  understand. 

The  natural  laws  of  the  mind  are  un¬ 
changeable.  The  mind  may  develop 
under  mental  laws,  but  it  cannot  change 
the  laws  themselves.  While  mankind, 
therefore,  has  attained  a  high  degree  of 
civilization,  the  prejudice  against  the 
Jews  remains  the  same,  because  it  de- 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


129 


pends  not  on  the  state  of  civilization  but 
on  the  basic  mental  law. 

The  prejudice  then  exists  and  must 
remain  as  long  as  the  cause  is  not  re¬ 
moved,  or  it  may  cease  when  every  man 
in  the  world  will  realize  that  his  preju¬ 
dice  against  the  Jews  is  caused  by  the 
abnormality  of  their  collective  body. 
But  this  is  impossible,  since  the  subject 
is  too  difficult  for  the  understanding  of 
the  untrained  mind. 

On  the  other  hand,  reality — the  fact 
itself  demonstrated — is  at  once  under¬ 
stood.  But  of  this  later. 

Our  assertion  concerning  the  cause  of 
antisemitism  derives  new  force  when  we 
consider  the  attitude  of  the  Jew  toward 
himself,  to  the  next  Jew  and  toward  the 
whole  Jewish  people.  The  fact  is  that 
the  Jew  is  prejudiced  against  himself. 

Observers  of  Jewish  life  have  ample 
opportunities  to  notice  this  fact.  It  is 
only  necessary  to  observe  the  conduct  of 
Jews  in  their  relations  to  one  another, 


130 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


their  demeanor  in  public  and  when  they 
are  among  Gentiles,  to  see  to  what  ex¬ 
tent  the  emotion  of  prejudice  is  within 
the  Jew  against  himself. 

“Now,  don’t  he  a  Jew!  One  cannot 
talk  with  a  Jew!  It  is  difficult  to  deal 
with  Jews!”  These  are  the  usual  re¬ 
marks  and  comments  of  Jews  when  in 
dispute  among  themselves. 

Jews  are  also  reluctant  in  conversa¬ 
tion  (when  they  are  only  able  to  speak 
another  language)  to  make  use  of  Yid¬ 
dish.  They  will  also  try  to  avoid  read¬ 
ing  Yiddish  newspapers  in  public,  even 
avoid  carrying  a  package  wrapped  in  a 
Yiddish  paper,  and  in  general  they  en¬ 
deavor  to  hide  anything  and  everything 
which  may  remind  one  that  they  are 
Jews. 

Jews  will  also  be  much  flattered  when 
told  that  they  don’t  look  like  Jews,  and 
will  try  to  resemble  the  Gentile  as  much 
as  possible.  Only  the  orthodox  Jews 
being  the  exception  to  this  rule. 


i 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


131 


Some  will  perhaps  say  that  the  long 
Goluth  robbed  the  Jew  of  self-respect, 

9 

and  that  because  he  is  regarded  with  dis¬ 
dain  by  others  he  tries  to  hide  his  iden¬ 
tity.  But  this  is  not  the  fact.  The  true 
reason  is  that  the  mind  of  the  Jew  is 
subject  to  the  same  mental  law  as  the 
Gentile’s,  and,  therefore,  he  is  preju¬ 
diced  against  himself  and  against  all 
Jews  for  precisely  the  same  reason  as 
the  Gentile. 

We  cannot  find  that  the  Gentile  or  the 
Jew  is  prejudiced  against  the  spiritual 
unity  of  the  Jews;  on  the  contrary,  the 
principles  of  Judaism,  whether  they  are 
clearly  or  instinctively  conscious  of 
them,  hold  them  in  the  iron  grip  of  truth 
which  they  cannot  weaken.  On  the 
spiritual  unity,  the  Jews  are  normal  and 
show  it  by  remaining  Jews.  But  against 
the  physical  unity  of  the  Jewish  people 
every  man  is  unconsciously  prejudiced. 
The  Jews  themselves  are  at  a  loss  and 
confused  as  to  what  the  Jewish  people 


132 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


is.  They  find  themselves  to  be  members 
of  something  and  yet  of  nothing.  They 
do  not  see  the  self  of  all  the  Jews — the 
Jewish  people. 

Mr.  Arnold  White  in  his  book,  “The 
Modern  Jew,”  referring  to  the  Jewish 
people,  says: 

“In  spite  of  their  differences  of 
opinion,  and  although  scattered  over 
the  face  of  the  earth,  the  Jews  main¬ 
tain  a  secret  and  indissoluble  bond  of 
common  interest.  When  attacked  from 
outside,  J ewry  presents  a  single  front 
to  the  enemy.” 

Mr.  White  cannot  understand  what  it 
is  which  actually  holds  the  Jews  to¬ 
gether,  and  he  calls  that  something  “a 
secret  and  indissoluble  bond  of  common 
interest.”  The  fact  is  that  their  secret 
bond  consists  in  the  fundamental  ethical 
principles  of  Judaism,  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  are  in  their  nature  universal  and 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


133 


eternal.  Jewry  presents  a  single  front 
to  the  enemy  when  attacked.  This  is  the 
natural  law  of  self-defense.  Otherwise 
every  Jew  is  prejudiced  against  himself 
and  against  all  J ews.  It  is  true  that  the 
Jews  fail  to  realize  that  they  are  pre¬ 
judiced  against  themselves  and  against 
one  another,  and  deny  it,  but  the  fact, 
nevertheless,  remains  a  fact. 

Is  it  possible  for  one  without  being 
prejudiced  against  himself  and  the  so¬ 
ciety  he  is  a  member  of  to  pass  such  re¬ 
marks  as  we  have  quoted?  or  can  one 
consider  it  a  compliment  and  a  flattery 
when  told  that  he  does  not  resemble  him¬ 
self  or  the  society  he  claims  to  be  a  mem¬ 
ber  of?  Can  we  imagine  an  American 
or  Englishman  or  Frenchman  or  a  mem¬ 
ber  of  any  other  nationality  being  flat¬ 
tered  by  such  a  remark?  Even  a  China¬ 
man  would  resent  such  a  supposed  flat¬ 
tery.  None  of  these  are  prejudiced 
against  their  respective  nations.  They 
cannot  be  because  their  nations  are  nor- 


134 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


mal  collective  bodies,  which  enable  their 
minds  to  be  psychological  and  logical. 

There  is  another  important  point  con¬ 
cerning  the  Jews  which  still  more 
strengthens  onr  assertion. 

At  the  same  time  when  mankind  re¬ 
gards  with  wonder  the  most  remarkable 
solidarity  among  the  Jews,  which,  by  the 
way,  is  actually  the  fact,  the  Jews  them¬ 
selves  continually  complain  that  “  there 
is  no  solidarity  in  Israel.’ ’  They  some¬ 
times  also  make  use  of  the  word  1  ‘ unity” 
in  that  connection,  but  what  they  mean 
by  it  is  “solidarity.”  The  truth  is  that 
they  do  not  know  what  they  mean. 

Every  Jewish  poet,  writer  of  fiction, 
thinker  and  rabbi  laments  the  strife  and 
discord  among  the  Jews. 

Because  there  are,  as  there  naturally 
must  be,  different  parties  among  the 
Jews,  they  call  it  strife  and  quarrel  in 
Israel.  Because  in  a  Jewish  congrega¬ 
tion  there  will  be  two  factions,  the  Jew 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


135 


will  say :  ‘  ‘  There  is  an  example  for  you 
of  the  solidarity  among  the  Jews.” 

Now,  it  will  never  occur  to  an  Ameri¬ 
can,  for  instance,  to  accuse  the  American 
nation  as  being  a  people  of  discord  and 
strife  because  there  are  Republican, 
Democratic  and  other  parties.  It  will 
never  enter  the  mind  of  an  Englishman 
that,  because  there  are  two  or  more  fac¬ 
tions  in  his  congregation,  there  is  no 
solidarity  among  the  English  people. 

We  understand  now  why  it  is  different 
with  the  Jew.  First,  we  have  observed 
that  inwardly  there  is  within  him  a  pre¬ 
judice  against  himself  and  his  own  by 
reason  of  the  law  of  the  mind,  and, 
secondly,  Israel  feels  that  it  is  ailing. 
Israel  knows  subconsciously  that  there  is 
something  missing  within  its  body  called 
Jews.  Israel  feels  that  it  needs  some¬ 
thing,  but  does  not  know  what. 

Collectively,  the  Jews  in  this  condition 
resemble  the  ailing  man  who  suffers 
without  knowing  what  particular  remedy 


136 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


will  cure  his  malady.  He  naturally  com¬ 
plains,  finds  fault  with  the  place,  with 
the  atmosphere,  with  himself  and  with 
everybody.  In  his  agony  he  calls  for 
things  which  at  least  somewhat  resemble 
the  remedy  he  is  actually  in  need  of. 
Unconsciously  he  is  near  that  something 
which  will  cure  the  disease ;  but  ignorant 
of  the  real  cause  he  consequently  fails  to 
name  the  remedy.  Even  if  a  physician 
correctly  diagnoses  his  malady  and  pre¬ 
scribes  the  real  medicine  which  will  re¬ 
move  the  cause  of  the  suffering,  the  pa¬ 
tient  may  fail  to  see  the  import  of  that 
remedy  and  refuse  to  submit  to  it. 
Under  such  circumstances  force  must  be 
used  with  the  patient  and  the  remedy 
administered  against  his  will.  After  the 
recovery  the  physician  can  say  with 
triumph  to  the  obstinate  sufferer:  Now, 
vide  et  crede. 

In  the  course  of  the  two  thousand 
years  since  Israel ’s  dispersion  among 
the  nations,  neither  he  nor  his  physicians 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


137 


have  realized  what  is  really  the  cause 
of  his  sufferings.  The  result  is  that 
they  called  for  remedies  which  pointed 
to  the  removal  of  the  effects,  but  not  of 
the  cause  of  the  malady. 

Frequently  we  find  some  Jews  as  well 
as  men  of  other  nationalities  come  pretty 
near  administering  the  right  cure.  There 
was  considerable  discussion  about  es¬ 
tablishing  that  normal  condition  in 
Israel  which  a  collective  body  of  men 
must  have.  There  were  attempts  at 
establishing  synods  and  other  represen¬ 
tative  bodies  for  all-Israel,  and  in  these 
the  Jews  instinctively  saw  the  omen 
faustum  for  better  days.  Unfortunately 
all  those  suggestions  and  attempts  were 
not  the  result  of  the  knowledge  that  this 
remedy  will  remove  the  primary  cause 
of  the  Jewish  malady,  but  were  mere 
guesswork  which  led  to  nothing  or  to 
very  little  improvement  of  the  conditions 
of  the  Jews. 

Ignorant  of  the  real  primary  cause  of 


138 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


the  Jewish  malady,  the  various  physi¬ 
cians  who  attended  upon  the  patient — the 
Jewish  people — have  only  stumbled  into 
the  right  way,  but  were  swerved  from 
their  positions  by  the  first  complications 
and  difficulties  which  arose  in  the  way 
and  they  wandered  off  in  opposite  direc¬ 
tions. 

Till  this  very  day  Israel’s  voice  calls  to 
the  Jews  for  solidarity,  but  what  it  really 
means  and  is  in  need  of  is  the  collective 
physical  unity  of  the  Jews. 

Strange  as  it  is,  at  all  times  since  the 
diaspora  and  up  to  the  present  day,  the 
names  “ Israel”  and  “  Jew”  impress  the 
mind  in  a  strikingly  different  manner. 
The  mind  realizes  that  the  names 
“ Israel”  and  “Jew”  mean  one  and  the 
same  thing,  yet  its  impression  of  these 
names  is  somehow  different.  The  name 
“Israel”  is  regarded  as  something 
definite  and  normal,  while  the  name 
“Jew”  is  considered  as  something 
vague,  mysterious,  puzzling. 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


139 


Why? 

Because  when  the  mind  thinks  of 

“Israel,”  it  unconsciously  thinks  of  the 

* 

normal  Israel  which  lived  and  acted  in 
a  natural  collective  capacity.  But  when 
the  mind  thinks  of  the  “Jew,”  it  has  no 
true  thought  concerning  that  name,  be- 
cause  the  Jew  in  his  collective  form  is 
an  abnormality. 

It  is  true  that  the  mind  is  unaware 
and  unconscious  of  the  aforementioned 
reasons  for  its  activities.  This  is  be¬ 
cause  the  mind,  as  we  have  pointed  out, 
works  under  certain  laws  without  real¬ 
izing  the  fact.  It  is  only  the  scientific 
psychologist  who  knows  more  or  less  the 
laws  under  which  the  mind  works,  and 
it  is  therefore  only  the  scientific  psy¬ 
chologist  who  realizes  the  reasons  for 
the  various  mental  phenomena. 

To  return  to  the  Jew,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  his  prejudice  against  himself 
and  against  all  the  Jews  is  the  result  of 
the  same  cause.  We  only  see  that  the 


140 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


law  of  the  mind  knows  of  no  distinc¬ 
tions,  and  enforces  itself  with  Jew  as 
with  Gentile.  The  Jew  perhaps  is  yet 
more  prejudiced  against  the  Jews  than 
the  Gentile,  if  we  can  judge  by  the  sen¬ 
timents  and  actions  of  such  Jews  who 
have  abandoned  their  people  altogether. 
A  Jewish  antisemite  is  always  worse 
than  one  of  another  nationality.  This 
is  because  the  Jew  suffers  from  the  ab¬ 
normality  of  the  J ewish  people,  of  which 
he  is  a  member,  and  the  suffering  adds 
to  the  Jewish  antisemite ’s  prejudice  the 
irritability  and  cruelty  of  the  sick. 

We,  therefore,  arrive  at  the  following 
important  principles  which,  from  the 
foregoing  observations,  appear  to  be 
fundamentally  true: 

(I.)  When  men  constitute  a  collec¬ 
tive  body — an  association  for  certain 
purposes — they  must  by  the  law  of 
nature  and  the  law  of  the  mind  (if  we 
may  separately  use  these  terms)  have 


FURTHER  PROOF. 


141 


representatives,  without  which  the  col¬ 
lective  body  is  unnatural — an  abnor¬ 
mality. 

(II.)  When  men  adhere  in  great 
numbers  to  a  certain  idea,  they  do  by 
reason  of  the  idea  constitute  a  distinct 
class,  and  by  law  of  nature  and  the  law 
of  the  mind  they  must,  therefore,  as 
such,  have  representatives. 

These  fundamental  principles  prove 
that  the  doctrine  of  anarchy  is  contrary 
to  the  laws  of  nature  and  the  laws  of 
the  mind  which  require,  above  all  things, 
normality  and  order . 


XIII. 


Of  Knowledge  and  Reason  vs.  Supersti¬ 
tion  and  Prejudice  and  of  Theory 

and  Fact. 

Prejudice  and  Superstition  take  flight 
when  Knowledge  and  Reason  appear. 
The  mind  is  so  constituted  that  it  can 
hold  neither  Superstition  and  Knowl¬ 
edge  together,  nor  Prejudice  and  Reason 
together.  Prejudice  and  Superstition 
often  go  hand  in  hand,  each,  then,  being 
the  complement  of  the  other.  Knowledge 
and  Reason,  on  the  other  hand,  always 
go  together,  Reason  ever  following 
Knowledge. 

The  triumph  of  Knowledge  and  Reason 
over  Prejudice  and  Superstition  results 
in  the  Progress  of  mankind. 

“Knowledge  is  Power.’ ’  This  power 
consists  in  the  ability  of  Knowledge  to 
purify  Reason.  Reason,  in  its  purity,  is 
Truth. 


142 


THEORY  AND  FACT. 


143 


Superstition  and  Prejudice  are  the  off¬ 
spring  of  Ignorance — of  the  crude  con¬ 
dition  of  the  mind.  They  are,  therefore, 
Error.  The  crudeness  of  the  mind  is  not 
its  diseased  condition,  but  merely  its 
undeveloped  .  state.  Knowledge,  there¬ 
fore,  polishes  Reason  and  develops  it, 
and  reduces  the  mind  to  a  pure  state. 
The  mind,  in  that  polished  condition,  can 
produce  pure  Reason,  and  then  sees  the 
truth. 

Superstitions  and  prejudices,  as  we 
have  seen,  are  not  a  mental  disease,  they 
are,  therefore,  not  hereditary.  If  they 
were  natural  maladies  of  the  mind,  there 
would  be  no  possible  chance  for  Knowl¬ 
edge  and  Reason  ever  to  take  root;  and 
there  could  be  no  Progress. 

The  mind  is  progressive  because  it  is 
a  healthy  organism,  capable  of  develop¬ 
ment  through  Knowledge. 

Superstitions  and  Prejudices  may  be 
handed  down  from  father  to  son  by  tradi¬ 
tions,  through  the  means  of  mouth  and 


144 


REASON  VS.  PREJUDICE. 


pen,  but  they  cannot  be  transmitted  in 
the  blood.  Ideas  are  not  hereditary. 

Superstitions  and  Prejudice,  there¬ 
fore  can  live  in  the  mind  only  till  the 
time  when  Knowledge  and  Reason  enter 
the  mind.  There  is  necessarily  a  battle 
at  first  between  the  old  ideas  which  are 
the  former  occupants  of  the  mind,  and 
the  new  ideas  which  invade  and  expel 
the  old  ones. 

The  length  of  time  of  such  battles  de¬ 
pends  on  how  deeply  rooted  the  old  ideas 
are  in  the  mind. 

The  mind’s  desire  to  retain  them  is 
what  we  call  Habit.  The  longer  the 
Habit  existed  the  harder  is  the  battle  of 
Knowledge  and  Reason  against  the  in¬ 
veterate  Superstitions  and  Prejudices. 
The  result,  however,  is  always  the  same. 
Knowledge  and  Reason  are  ever  the  con¬ 
querors. 

Only  a  memory  will  remain  in  the 
mind  of  its  former  ideas,  and  it  will 


THEORY  AND  FACT. 


145 


wonder  how  it  could  ever  lend  itself  to 
the  former  views. 

When,  in  our  advanced  times,  we  still 
meet  superstitions  and  prejudices  re¬ 
garding  certain  matters  and  phenomena, 
it  is  evidence  that  our  Knowledge  and 
Reason  are  not  mature  on  all  things  and 
that  in  our  mind  there  are  numerous  re- 
cesses  to  which  the  light  of  knowledge 
and  pure  reason  has  not  yet  penetrated. 

Having  obtained  light  on  the  primary 
cause  of  antisemitism,  and  knowing  that 
the  Jewish  Question  exists,  not  because 
there  is  anything  wrong  about  the  Jews 
as  men,  but  because  their  abnormal 
state  as  a  collective  body  of  Jews  makes 
it  impossible  for  the  mind  (which  acts 
under  certain  laws  of  its  own)  to  be 
psychological  and  logical  as  regards  the 
Jews,  the  problem,  the  Jewish  Question, 
is  solved.  But  for  whom  is  it  solved? 

It  is  solved  only  for  those  who  have 
the  knowledge  and  reason  which  explains 


146 


REASON  VS.  PREJUDICE. 


the  cause  for  the  prejudice  against  the 
Jews.  For  those  who  have  not  that 
knowledge  and  reason  the  Jewish  Ques¬ 
tion  must  continue  to  exist. 

To  solve  practically  the  Jewish  Ques¬ 
tion  for  all  mankind  by  means  of  educa¬ 
tion,  it  would  be  necessary  to  reach  every 
civilized  man.  Considering  that  in  order 
to  understand  the  answer  to  the  problem 
a  cultured  mind  is  required,  and  that 
the  vast  majority  of  men  are  not 
students,  it  appears  that  a  solution  by 
education  is  impossible  before  the  lapse 
of  a  great  many  centuries. 

Supposing  that  well-known  authorities 
should  come  out  with  a  statement  to  all 
mankind  that  there  is  nothing  wrong 
about  the  Jews,  and  that  they  find  the 
prejudice  against  them  unjustified, 
would  such  a  statement  solve  the  ques¬ 
tion? 

In  an  earlier  part  of  this  work  we 
have  discussed  the  relation  of  problem 
solvers  and  mankind,  and  have  seen  that 


THEORY  AND  FACT. 


147 


mankind  has  confidence  in  the  opinions 
of  problem  solvers  only  when  the  latter 
demonstrate  by  fact  that  their  theories 
are  right. 

How  can  the  theorist  demonstrate  the 
theory  presented  in  this  work? 

We  realize  that  to  understand  the  ab¬ 
stract  is  difficult,  whereas  to  believe  in 
the  concrete  is  easy.  The  abstract  is 
only  an  idea,  and  is  believed  when  re¬ 
duced  to  a  reality.  As  soon  as  an  idea 
is  realized  it  ceases  to  be  a  theory,  it 
becomes  a  fact,  and,  as  such,  is  easily  be¬ 
lieved,  notwithstanding  its  intricacies. 
The  concrete  fact  speaks  more  than  hun¬ 
dreds  of  abstract  illustrations  and  argu¬ 
ments  regarding  its  possibility. 

When  Marconi,  for  instance,  at  first 
brought  forward  his  theory  regarding 
wireless  telegraphy,  it  was  an  idea.  In 
the  mind  of  Marconi  only,  and  in  the 
minds  of  such  who,  like  him,  understood 
the  theory,  wireless  telegraphy  was  a 


148 


REASON  VS.  PREJUDICE. 


fact  before  it  was  realized,  but  not  in 
the  mind  of  mankind. 

How  long  would  it  have  taken  to  con¬ 
vince  the  world  by  explanation  that  the 
theory  of  wireless  telegraphy  is  correct  ? 

Ten  centuries  of  education  would, 
perhaps,  not  have  sufficed  to  convince  all 
men  that  wireless  telegraphy  can  be  a 
fact,  whereas  the  fact  itself  was  believed 
the  very  day  it  was  announced  that  a 
message  was  sent  and  received  by  wire¬ 
less. 

The  same  thing  will  be  true  of  this 
theory  in  the  case  of  the  Jews. 


XIV. 

Summing  Up. 

To  sum  up  the  contents  of  this  work 
we  obtain  the  following: 

There  is  no  other  cause  of  anti¬ 
semitism  than  one.  This  one  consists  in 
the  emotion  of  prejudice  of  the  Gentile 
against  the  Jew.  All  other  given  causes 
are  only  the  effects  of  the  one  cause — the 
emotion  of  prejudice. 

Prejudice  against  the  Jews  is  not 
hereditary. 

The  emotion  of  prejudice  is  actually 
not  against  the  Jew,  but  against  the 
name  Jew. 

The  name  Jew  identifies  not  the  indi¬ 
vidual  Jew  alone,  but  the  whole  Jewish 
people,  the  individual  Jew  being  only  a 
member,  a  part  of  the  whole. 

There  is  no  Jewish  people,  but  there 
exists  a  multitude  of  Jews. 


149 


150 


SUMMING  UP. 


A  multitude  is  not  a  society,  or  a  peo¬ 
ple,  though  the  multitude  may  exist 
under  one  certain  name. 

The  difference  between  a  people  and  a 
multitude  is  that  the  latter  lacks  the  ele¬ 
ment  of  assemblage  and  representation. 

A  multitude  should  be  of  only  tempo¬ 
rary  duration ;  if  it  is  permanent  it  is  an 
abnormal  society. 

The  mind  works  under  a  certain  law 
and  can  form  a  true  judgment  of  col¬ 
lective  bodies  only  when  these  are 
normal. 

An  abnormal  collective  body  makes  it 
impossible  for  the  mind  to  be  psychologi¬ 
cal  and  logical.  Without  these  the  mind 
cannot  form  a  true  conception  either  of 
the  body  or  of  any  or  all  of  its  parts 
and  their  relation  and  union  as  such. 

When  the  mind  is  unable  to  form  a 
true  and  definite  thought  regarding  a 
collective  body,  and  the  latter  exists  for 
a  long  time,  it  becomes  confused  as  to 
the  meaning  of  the  body  and  its  parts, 


SUMMING  UP. 


151 


and  unconsciously  develops  the  emotion 
of  prejudice  against  the  object  and  its 
parts,  and  even  becomes  superstitious 
regarding  the  body  as  time  goes  on  with¬ 
out  its  finding  an  explanation  of  the 
riddle. 

The  cause  of  the  emotion  of  prejudice 
against  the  Jews  is  that  the  mind  can¬ 
not  understand  and  explain  what  the  col¬ 
lective  body  of  Jews  represents.  The 
mind,  by  reason  of  the  abnormality  of 
the  Jewish  collective  body,  cannot  be 
psychological  and  logical.  It  is  con¬ 
fused,  has  no  clear  idea,  and  conceives 
a  repugnance  and  prejudice  against  the 
abnormal  object — the  Jews. 

The  law  of  the  mind  enforces  itself  on 
the  conservative  mind  as  well  as  on  the 
radical;  the  ignorant  as  well  as  the 
educated ;  the  Aryan  as  well  as  the  Sem¬ 
ite — in  fact,  all  possible  classes  of  men. 
Therein  we  find  the  reason  why  all 
classes  of  men,  including  the  Jews  them¬ 
selves,  are  prejudiced  against  the  Jews. 


152 


SUMMING  UP. 


The  Jews  are  an  international  ethical 
and  spiritual  society.  No  matter  how 
vast  a  membership  a  society,  whether 
local  or  international,  may  have,  in  order 
to  be  a  normal  association  and  not  a 
mere  multitude,  it  must  have  the  ele¬ 
ments  of  assemblage  and  representation, 
these  being  the  only  elements  which  dis¬ 
tinguish  a  normal  society  from  a  multi¬ 
tude.  Assemblage  of  an  international 
society  takes  the  form  of  representation. 
The  Jews  have  it  not. 

Our  mental  blindness  on  the  Jewish 
Question  is  cured.  Our  eyes  have  opened 
and  we  see  in  what  the  mystery  of  the 
Jewish  riddle  consists. 


1 


XV. 


Final  Answer. 


Tlie  difficult  part  of  our  work  on  the 
Jewish  Question  is  over.  To  trace  the 
primary  cause  of  a  malady  is  always 
harder  than  to  discover  the  remedy.  The 
knowledge  of  the  cause  itself  points  to 
what  the  remedy  should  be. 

Knowing  that  the  primary  cause  of 
the  troubles  of  the  Jews  lies  in  the  fact 
that  the  Jews  are  a  collective  body,  de¬ 
viating  from  the  normal  structure  of  an 
association  of  men,  thereby  causing  con¬ 
fusion  in  the  mind  even  of  every  Jew, 
and  especially  in  the  mind  of  the  non- 
Jew,  and  thus  creating  that  hatred 
against  themselves  which  is  known  as 
antisemitism,  we  see  that  the  remedy 
suggests  itself  by  indicating  that  it  is 
necessary  to  transform  the  present  cha¬ 
otic  state  of  the  Jews  into  a  state  of 

153 


i 


154 


FINAL  ANSWER. 


order  and  normality ;  in  other  words,  to 
change  the  multitude  of  Jews  into  a  so¬ 
ciety  of  Jews. 

We  have  observed  that  the  difference 
between  a  society  and  a  multitude  con¬ 
sists  not  in  the  one  possessing  a  territory 
and  the  other  not,  but  only  in  the  fact 
that  the  normal  association  has  the  ele¬ 
ment  of  assemblage  and  representation, 
while  the  multitude  has  it  not.  There  is 
no  normal  association  in  a  collective 
body  of  men  when  they  are  without 
representatives  who  bear  the  same  rela¬ 
tion  to  the  collective  body  as  the  head  of 
an  individual  to  a  natural  body.  A  mul¬ 
titude  therefore  is  a  headless  body  and 
for  this  reason  is  not  capable  of  delib¬ 
erating,  resolving  and  acting  in  a  per¬ 
sonal  capacity.  A  multitude  has  no  will 
and  consequently  no  corporate  status. 

If  it  is  a  permanent  multitude,  it  is  a 
permanent  living  abnormality,  which 
must  cause  that  confusion  in  the  mind 
which  results  in  the  emotion  of  preju- 


FINAL  ANSWER. 


155 


dice  and  even  the  emotion  of  supersti¬ 
tion  against  itself,  and  consequently  also 
against  every  member  of  the  permanent 
abnormal  society. 

The  only  way,  then,  to  remove  the 
cause  of  prejudice  against  itself  is,  as 
we  have  said,  that  the  multitude  should 
cease  to  be  a  multitude  and  become  a 
normal  society  with  representatives — 
with  a  head.  The  world  will  not  regard 
such  a  step  on  the  part  of  the  Jews  as 
improper.  There  being  no  pactum  illici- 
tum  among  the  Jews,  but  an  ethical  pur¬ 
pose  for  their  existence  as  a  people,  man¬ 
kind  will  have  nothing  against  it,  pro¬ 
vided  this  fact  is  explained  to  the  world 
in  a  proper  way  by  a  fitting  Declaration. 

If  the  multitude  is  a  local  one,  to  be¬ 
come  a  normal  association  it  must  have 
local  representatives,  but  if  it  is  an  inter¬ 
national  multitude  it  must  then  have  in¬ 
ternational  representatives,  an  interna¬ 
tional  head. 

The  Jews  are  scattered  all  over  the 


156 


FINAL  ANSWER. 


world.  Being,  as  we  have  pointed  out, 
an  international  multitude,  we  find  a  pre¬ 
judice  against  them,  collectively  and  in¬ 
dividually,  international  as  well.  The 
fact  is  that  antisemitism  is  universal. 

The  international  head  of  the  Jews  is 
to  consist  of  representatives  from  every 
locality  where  Jews  are.  Such  bodies 
are  deliberative  and  there  must  also  be 
officers  to  carry  out  and  execute  the 
orders  of  the  deliberative  body,  hence 
executive  officers. 

As  the  representatives  will  come  from 
various  parts  of  the  world  to  represent 
the  Jewish  international  society  it  will 
consequently  be  an  international  Jewish 
congress  with  executive  officers,  and  as 
the  international  society  of  Jews  is  a 
permanent  society,  it  must  have  a  perma¬ 
nent  International  J ewish  Congress  with 
Executive  Officers. 

As  the  J ews  are  by  communi  consensu 
Jews,  they  must  also  by  the  same  consent 
submit  to  order  and  normality  as  a  dis- 


FINAL  ANSWER. 


157 


tinct  society  of  Jews,  and  they  will  if  the 
prominent  men  in  Israel  will  call  upon 
them  to  give  up  the  life  of  a  multitude 
and  become  the  International  Jewish 
People. 

It  is  true  that  it  is  difficult  to  make  a 
people  unlearn  its  errors  and  the  habit 
of  living  like  a  multitude.  But  when  the 
pressure  from  the  outside  is  so  hard  it 
will  not  be  difficult  to  make  the  millions 
of  Jews  realize  what  the  primary  cause 
of  their  troubles  is,  and  that  the  rem¬ 
edy  is  within  their  reach  and  depends 
entirely  upon  them,  namely,  the  estab¬ 
lishment  of  a  permanent  International 
Jewish  Congress  with  executive  officers. 

This  is  the  praescriptum  for  the  Jew¬ 
ish  multitude  which,  if  acted  upon,  will 
destroy  the  germ  of  the  primary  cause 
of  antisemitism. 

Soblata  causa ,  tollitur  effectus. 

This  is  the  final  answer  to  the  old 
Jewish  Question. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


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159 


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Herzl  (Theodor).  A  Jewish  state.  An  attempt  at 
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-  Studies  in  Jewish  statistics,  social,  vital  and 

anthropometric.  London:  D.  Nutt,  1891.  4  p.  1.,  Ixix, 
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